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THE 



CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 



BY THE 



RIGHT REV. WM. INGRAIIAm'kIP, D.D., LLC, 



BISHOP OF CALIFORNIA. 



" "Within these walls each fluttering- guest 
Is gently lured to one safe nest — 
Without, 'tis moaning and unrest." 

Keble. 



•'0 



b^> Pf'~ 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 

549 & 551 BROADWAY. 

1877. 






COPYRIGHT BY 

D. ArPLETON AND COMPANY, 

1S77. 



TO 

THE EIGIIT REV. JOSEPII P. B. WILMER, D. D., LL. D., 

BISHOP OF LOUISIANA, 

THE AUTHOR 

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBES THIS VOLUME, 

IN REMEMBRANCE OF 

THEIR EARLY STUDENT DAYS. 



PRAYER OF THE ORIENTAL CHURCII. 

" Grant, my Lord, that the ears which have heard the voice of Thy 
songs, may never hear the words of clamor and dispute ; that the eyes 
which have seen Thy great love, may also behold Thy blessed hope ; that 
the tongues which have sung the Sanctis, may also speak the truth ; that 
the feet which have walked in the church, may tread the region of light ; 
that the bodies which have tasted Thy living Body, may be restored to 
newness of life." 



PREFACE. 



In this little volume the writer has endeavored to 
give a picture of the Church of the Apostles in the 
days of its purity, in some cases following it down 
until its brightness was dimmed by the errors and 
superstitions of Medieval times. Taking the brief 
description of St. Luke, he has attempted to fill up 
the outline, so as to enable those now living to realize 
how the men of that day believed and acted. The 
four points brought forward, he thinks, will cover much 
of the ground necessary for ordinary readers to know 
with regard to the Primitive Church. 

Each of these articles might have been expanded 
into a volume, and, indeed, has furnished the text for 
many learned works in the past ; but the writer's wish 
has been to present these subjects in a popular shape, 
to inform those who have neither time nor taste to 
enter deeply into theological discussions. He has there- 
fore avoided controversies — like that on the Eucharist — 
which seemed to come naturally in his way, and which 



PREFACE. 



have for centuries awakened the bitterness of polemical 
disputants. His object has been to make these articles 
more historical than theological. 

In discussing the Council of Mce, he has acknowl- 
edged, in. several places, his indebtedness to the Yery 
Rev. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D. D., Dean of West- 
minster. His work on " The Eastern Church " can 
have no rival for picturesque effect, as the author had 
advantages possessed by no other writer on this sub- 
ject. He had himself visited these scenes of Eastern 
Ecclesiastical History, and, uniting the descriptions of 
the tourist with the narrative of the historian, he has 
been enabled to impart an interest to his pages which 
nothing else could have given them. 

The writer has, however, carefully studied the 
works of Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, and Thcodoret, 
the original sources of the history of that Era in the 
Church ; but he found that the Dean of Westminster 
had already selected every salient point from these old 
chroniclers to weave the narrative for his own fascinat- 
ing pages. When, therefore, the writer may some- 
times seem to be following in the steps of Dr. Stan- 
ley, and drawing his facts from him, he is in reality 
quoting from the original authorities, the study of 
which was common to them both. 

The materials for a picture of the Early Church, 
even slight as that presented by the following pages. 



PREFACE. 



are scattered widely through, the works of those cen- 
turies. They exist, too, in most varied forms. After 
leaving the sure record of Inspiration, which closes its 
history of the Church in suffering and persecution, we 
come to the narratives of Eusebius of Csesarea, and 
the other historians of that day whom we have men- 
tioned above. Then, in some cases, facts and points of 
doctrine have to be gleaned from sermons, and homi- 
lies, and controversial writings, or they are spread be- 
fore us in the glowing eloquence of St. Cyprian, as he 
sends his Epistles from the Church at Carthage. And 
so, here and there, we gather up the story of the early 
faith, until the review of this era ends, perhaps, in St. 
Augustine's " City of God," as he calls up the history 
of the past, and sends forth his shout of triumph over 
the fall of the " Eternal City " by the hands of the 
half-civilized Goths. When the crash startled the na- 
tions in terror, their ancient reverence for Rome as 
the Mistress of the world prepared them to unite in 
her solemn requiem ; but to St. Augustine she was 
only the "Mystical Babylon," and the fiery African 
recorded his loud gratulation that her power over the 
Church had passed away forever. 

There could not, indeed, have been selected a sub- 
ject which afforded less opportunity for originality than 
an attempt to portray the Church of the early centu- 
ries. Since first the Christian Church became " a pres- 



PREFACE. 



ence and a power " in the world, countless writers, for 
various and often widely-different objects, have been 
gleaning the field, and all that now can be attempted 
by any one is to select the facts, and so arrange them 
as to answer whatever purpose he may have in view. 
The explorer of the present day is " last of all, as one 
that gathereth after the grape-gatherers." ' 

As the drama of this world is drawing to its close, 
while the coming of our Lord seems to be delayed, the 
scoffing spirit of the times is heard with greater bold- 
ness questioning the solemn verities of our faith. But, 
at the same time, the earnest and inquiring are asking 
with deeper interest, Where is that Church which was 
constituted " the pillar and ground of the truth V It 
is to answer this question that this volume is partly 
intended, that men may see for themselves how our 
Lord and His apostles originally organized His Church, 
and then, as they look on the conflicts which are wast- 
ing the strength of so many who "profess and call 
themselves Christians," they may recognize in the One 
Apostolic Church, in its different branches, the linea- 
ments of that likeness which has come down to us, still 
existing through all the intervening centuries. 

The writer has endeavored not to make a mere de- 
tail of history, but to point out the practical lessuns 
taught by these events. As his readers follow the nar- 

1 Ecclus. xxxiii. 16. 



PREFACE. 9 



rative of the progress of the faith " through the ages all 
along," he would have them imbibe something of the 
spirit of those who then, even at the cost of life, gave 
form and impress to the Church, and endeavor, in this 
waning period of the world — " this setting part of 
Time " — to revive in their own hearts the lofty devo- 
tion of those who, in far by-gone centuries, first chant- 
ed the anthems and uttered -the prayers which are now 
our precious inheritance. 

San Francisco, May, 1877. 



CONTENTS. 



Creeds . . . . . . . .13 

Fellowship . . . . . . .61 

Eucharist . . . . . . . .91 

Liturgies . . . . . . .113 

Conclusion . . . . . . . .109 



I. 

OEEEDS. 



Who goeth in the way that Christ hath gone, 
Is much more sure to meet with Him, than one 
That travelcth by-ways." 

George Herbert. 



I. 

CREEDS. 

It was a declaration of one of the patriarchs of the 
olden time : " Inquire, I pray thee, of the former age 
and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers (for 
we are bnt of yesterday, and know nothing, because our 
clays on earth are a shadow). Shall not they teach thee 
and tell thee and utter words out of their heart \ " * 

And in this sentence he reveals but a natural im- 
pulse of the human mind. We are tempted ever to 
turn from the harshness of present realities to the dis- 
tant past. We indulge in fond regrets for all that time 
has swept away, and gaze with longing eyes upon the 
landscape which lies far behind us, because it is clothed 
in a mellow light and rests there in dimness and si- 
lence. The tones of the living fall upon our ears with 
a harsh reality, and we look back with regret to the 
dead of ages past as their voices float gently u down 
through the corridors of time," and swell about us 
with solemn melody. We believe that theirs was the 
happy age which was freed from the evils of this pres- 
ent time. 

The feeling, therefore, is a natural one, and seems 
deeply implanted in the mind of man. It is founded 

1 Job viii. 8. 



1G THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

on the belief that the early history of the human family 
was one of peace and purity, while, as time advanced, 
each passing century caused the shadows to darken 
more deeply over the pathway of our race and the glory 
which had rested on its birth — 

" .... to die away, 
And fade into the light of common day." 

The classic poets love, therefore, to dwell on the 
Golden Age, which they represent as gradually changing 
till it became the Iron Age in which they lived. There 
is, too, a strange universality about this tradition. We 
recognize its existence among all the nations of the 
East. They all look back to some Elysium in the past, 
the reality of which is gone, and the remembrance only 
survives in the legends they have inherited. They 
turn instinctively to the birthplace of the human race, 
and the Arab now, as he sits beneath his tent, narrates 
to his children wild and romantic stories of the early 
Eden. Even now, he declares, there is a guardian 
sanctity resting on it ; that there the wild beast may 
not wander, or the wild bird pause in its flight ; but 
the eye of God rests upon it, and the holiness of its 
early day still guards its hallowed precincts. 

, The Church has also its Golden Age to which it looks 
back. It is an age of primitive purity, when the Apos- 
tles had just received the commission from their Lord, 
and were going forth to " inherit the earth." Small, 
indeed, was the band to which this mighty work was 
committed, and a single " upper room " was able to 
contain all who in the Holy City had professed the faith 
of the despised Xazarone. And against them were ar- 



CREEDS. 17 



rayed the sacred learning of Judea, as taught by its 
ancient priesthood ; the brilliant philosophy of Athens, 
where men had bowed to the glorious dreams of Plato 
and the intellectual teaching of Aristotle; and that 
wide-spread Oriental system, which could scarcely count 
its proselytes, as its influence stretched from the shrines 
of Memphis and Heliopolis, far Eastward over the plains 
of Asia, till it reached the cavemed temples of India. 

Yet the faithful were all of one heart and one voice, 
and therefore the infant Church went forth iearlessly 
to proclaim its authority over the systems of this world. 
And so it was that it triumphed, bowing down every 
false creed before it, infusing a new life into the wasted 
forms of Eastern thought, and spreading a lofty tone 
through all the literature of the world, whether its 
utterance was heard in the Christianized Platonism of 
Alexandria, or it spoke out in the fantastic musings of 
the Fathers of the Desert. 

"It was a religion of visible self-denial and holiness, 
that willingly took on itself the sorrows which to the 
multitude were inevitable, and lightened their sufferings 
by its own pain and privation. It was not, then, that urn- 
bratile thing, that feeble exotic, shut up in churches, par- 
sonages, and parlors ; but walked abroad, made the mul- 
titude both the receivers, the collectors, and distribu- 
tors of her bounties ; compelled cities to wear her livery, 
and dared to inherit the earth. She then provided 
homes and forms of operation for the heroic virtues, 
for lofty aims and firm resolves, making their torrents 
flow in the manifold channels of mercy, instead of suf- 
fering them to waste the land with a baleful magnifi- 
cence. She then gave names, and methods, and ancient 



18 THE CnUECH OF TEE APOSTLES. 

sanctions, and solemn order, and venerable holiness, 
and ev r ery quality men love and obey, to the pious bear- 
ers of spiritual and temporal aid to the ignorant and 
poor, as even the many sacred titles, which in the Old 
World the streets, and gates, and bridges, are still suf- 
fered to bear, do testify. She then did so combine and 
temper these works of benevolence with other holy em. 
ployments, with frequent daily prayer and oft-heard 
choral praise, that the social acts of temporal and ghost- 
ly relief seemed no separate and adventitious work, no 
petty craft of artificial goodness, but rather flowing 
from a something holy, natural, and complete in all its 
parts. She then had officers and employments for all ; 
that all, however humble in rank, or wealth, or mental 
culture, might be personally interested in the Church's 
work. She then could claim her own from every rank, 
teach all her holy character, make all acknowledge her 
claims to sacredncss and authority." l 

Such is the picture of the ancient Church; and in 
this clay, when its glory seems to have faded, and its 
majesty to be blighted by the atmosphere of this work- 
ins world — when we look about us in vain for the hero- 
ism and the earnest convictions which characterized 
those distant days, when the seamless garment of Christ 
is rent asunder, and they who bear the Christian name 
have turned their weapons against each other — should 
we wish to call up this vision of beauty and to array 
before us a true representation of the Holy Catholic 
Church, we are obliged to look back through the clouds 
and mistiness of centuries that are gone. 

In endeavoring, then, to lead our readers to survey 

1 British Critic, No. Ivi., p. 3T0. 



CREEDS. 19 



tlie Church in the peace and purity of its early day, we 
would turn to the very fountain-head — to the descrip- 
tion which the inspired writer has left of the fold of 
Christ, as it appeared before it had lost the fervor of 
its first love, or its early zeal had faded away. He 
sums up all in a single sentence, " And they continued 
steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and 
in breaking of bread, and in prayers." l Let us look, then, 
at these different points, as each develops the Church 
in a new phase. Let us unroll the records of the past, 
and, taking the history of the Church as pictured by the 
Ecclesiastical writers of that day, we shall see how well 
in each particular it merited the commendation of St. 
Luke. The first point, then, brought before us is, the 

STEADFASTNESS OF THE CHURCH IN THE APOSTLES' DOC- 
TRINE. 

What was that doctrine, and where are we to look 
for it ? At first the Church needed no formal profes- 
sion of its faith, as was afterward embodied in its 
Creeds. It was too early for the memory of its Lord's 
teaching to be lost, while His blood still crimsoned the 
heights of Calvary, and the earth was yet fragrant with 
His footsteps. The first teachers, too, were men of 
simple hearts and no worldly learning ; and it was re- 
served for another age, when philosophy had begun its 
endeavors to warp the faith to agreement with its own 
lessons, to witness the perversion of those primary 
truths on which the first generation rested its hopes. 
Few and simple, we believe, were at that time the tests 
of faith, for error had not yet crept into the fold. 
When the Ethiopian eunuch applied for baptism to 

1 Acts ii. 42. 



20 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

Philip the deacon, his answer was, " If thou believest 
with all thy heart, thou may est." And when the eu- 
nuch had declared, " I believe that Jesus Christ was the 
Son of God," he was admitted by that rite into the 
Christian Church. This simple profession of faith in 
the Divinity and Messiahship of our Lord included ev- 
erything which in that day was necessary. There is, 
therefore, in this point of view, a philosophical truth 
in that sentence of Newman's, " Freedom from symbols 
and articles is abstractly the highest state of Christian 
communion." ' 

But soon there was evidence of the necessity for a 
more formal declaration of the Christian faith, as the 
restless intellect of man began to frame doctrines not 
in accordance with the teachings of the Apostles. The 
first inspired teachers left behind them no complete 
system of Christian doctrine. The Epistles we now 
have were addressed to persons already instructed, al- 
ready put in charge of the sacred deposit of Christian 
truth, before they received the Sacrament of Baptism. 
" It is true, indeed, that they were so directed by the 
Holy Spirit in writing these apparently casual and un- 
connected pieces, that no portion of the mass of divine- 
ly-revealed truth should lack written proof in confirma- 
tion from some part or other of their writings ; but 
that truth is nowhere exhibited entire, nowhere system- 
atically or theologically stated, as in a Creed or a Cate- 
chism, nowhere so stated as it was used for purposes of 
instruction or profession." a 

But scarcely had these early laborers entered into their 

1 Newman's "Arians of the Fourth Century." 

2 Mobcrly's "Forty Days," p. 78. 



CREEDS. 21 



rest, and the Church thus been deprived of the power 
of reference to men who had seen their Lord in the 
flesh, when those who survived them felt the need of 
something more. As the Church, too, extended into 
heathen lands, it became of essential importance that 
the leading points of Christian doctrine they were to 
receive should be placed before them compressed into 
a small compass. 1 Experience soon demonstrated how 
useless it was to bring before the minds of the uncul- 
tivated and the barbarous vague or indefinite views of 
the faith. It was a necessity, therefore, in dealing with 
the heathen tribes with whom they were soon brought 
into contact, that the great verities of Christianity should 
be inculcated in brief and emphatic propositions, which 
the mind could grasp and the memory retain. The 
teachers of the faith began, therefore, to state the great 
outlines of the Apostles' teaching — the doctrines they 
had received from them — and these they required to 
be professed by all who came forward to baptism. 

Thus arose what is called the Apostles' Creed — that 
form which now, at the distance of eighteen centuries 
from its origin, is repeated each time we assemble for 
the worship of God. Though probably not composed 
by the Apostles 'themselves, yet it was acknowledged 
in the Church throughout the world to contain a general 
summary of all the great and fundamental truths they 
taught. 

We cannot but mark its perfect simplicity — how it 
deals with nothing but the primary doctrines of our 
faith. This characteristic alone would be sufficient to 
show the age in which it had its origin. According to 

1 Milman's "History of Christianity,*' ii., 115. 



22 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

the summary of it given in the Church Catechism, it 
teaches the great facts of " God the Father, who hath 
made ns and all the world ; God the Son, who hath re- 
deemed us and all mankind ; God the Holy Ghost, 
who sanctifieth us and all the people of God." It is 
evidently not intended — like the later Creeds — to guard 
against any particular errors. It is therefore the most 
ancient and the simplest expansion of the doctrines of 
our Lord as they were handed down in the profession 
made at baptism. " Just outside of the Canon of actual 
Scripture, and not claiming a literal inspiration like that 
of actual Scripture, it is nevertheless the earliest his- 
torical record of the systematic doctrine of the Apos- 
tles." l 

But, were all other proofs of the antiquity of this 
Creed wanting, we should draw the inference that it had 
existed in the days of the Apostles, from the fact that 
we so often meet with its expressions incorporated in 
the writings of that period. It tinged the religious 
firmament, and, in treating of the faith, its early de- 
fenders seemed insensibly to adopt the phraseology 
of the Creed as expressions with which they were fa- 
miliar. 

When St. Paul is charging St, Timothy to " hold 
fast the form of sound words which he had heard," he 
must have been alluding to some well-known formulary 
of doctrine which had been delivered to them. And 
what more probable than that it should have been this 
earliest Creed, which must have been widely spread 
even at that day ? And so, in writing to the Corinth- 

1 Moberly's " Forty Days," p. 79. See King's M History of the Apos- 
tles 1 Greed," and Bingham's " Grig. K ; .vies.," h. xi., chap, vii., see. 8. 



GREEDS. 23 



ians, in enforcing the doctrine of the resurrection, he 
seems to be quoting from the Creed which he had pre- 
viously taught them. " I delivered unto you first of 
all that which I also received, how that Christ died for 
our sins, according to the Scriptures, and that he was 
buried, and that he rose again the third day, according 
to the Scriptures." : 

And, if we pass beyond the Canon of Holy Script- 
ures to the writings of men in the next generation, we 
find the most evident use of the language of the Creed. 
So it was with St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who 
was a disciple of St. John. In writing to the Trallians, 
at the close of the first century, he says : " Turn a deaf 
ear to any man who departs, in what he says, from 
Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David and born 
of Mary ; who truly was born, did eat, and did drink ; 
truly was persecuted under Pontius Pilate ; truly was 
crucified and died, being seen of them that are in 
Heaven, of them that are on earth, and of them that 
are under the earth ; who truly also was raised from 
the dead, His Father raising Him ; in the likeness 
whereto we also who believe in Him shall His Father 
raise up through Jesus Christ, without whom we have 
no real life." 2 

So, again, Justin Martyr, in the year 140, in his 
" Apology for Christianity," in describing the rite of 
Baptism, uses this language : " We lead them to a place 
where there is water, and there they are regenerated in 
the same manner as we also were ; for they are then 
washed in that water in the name of God the Father 
and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour, Jesus 

1 1 Cor. xv. 3. 2 " Records of the Church " (Oxford), No. V. 



24 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. . . . He who is so illu- 
minated is baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, who 
was crucified under Pontius Pilate ; and in the name 
of the Holy Spirit, who, by the prophets, foretold all 
things concerning Jesus." * 

The fullest adoption, however, of the words of the 
Creed, is that shown by Irengeus, Bishop of Lyons, in 
France, who died in the year 202. In the formulary 
which he set forth, he says : " The Church, although 
extended through the whole world, even unto the end 
of the earth, has received from the Apostles and their 
disciples the belief in one God, the Father Almighty, 
maker of heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in 
them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who 
was made flesh for our salvation ; and in the Holy 
Ghost, who, by the prophets, proclaimed the merciful 
dispensation, and the coming, and the birth from a Vir- 
gin, and the Passion, and the Resurrection, and the 
Ascension into heaven, in our flesh, of the beloved 
Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His appearing from heaven 
in the glory of the Father, to gather together all things 
in one, and to raise from the dead all flesh of human 
kind ; that to Christ Jesus, our Lord and God and 
Saviour, and King, according to the good pleasure of 
the Invisible Father, every knee may bow, of things in 
Heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, 
and every tongue may confess Him, and that He may 
recompense just judgment upon all, sending into ev- 
erlasting fire wicked spirits and angels that trans- 
gressed and became apostates, and irreligious, unjust, 
lawless, and profane men, but upon the just and holy, 

1 Justin Martyr's " Second Apology." 



CREEDS. 25 



who have kept His commandments and persevere in 
His love, whether serving Him from the first or turn- 
ing by repentance, may bestow immortality by the free 
gift of life, and secure for them everlasting glory." 1 

These are the words of the disciple of Polycarp, who 
had known the Apostle John. But, one remove from 
the Apostles, he bears his witness to the Catholic faith, 
such as the Church holds to this day. 



Three centuries rolled by, during which the Chris- 
tian Church had no need of any other profession of its 
doctrines. And we see the reason why Creeds and Con- 
fessions of faith during that period were short and sim- 
ple. " While there were no heretics, there was no need 
to guard against heresy. Antidotes are only given to 
persons who have taken poison, or who are likely to 
take it. Neither do we use precautions against con- 
tagion when no disease is to be caught. The case, how- 
ever, is altered when the air has become infected and 
thousands are dying all around us. It is then necessary 
to call in the physician, and guard against danger. The 
case was the same with the Church when she saw her 
children in peril from new and erroneous doctrines. 
When a member wished to be admitted, it was her 
duty to examine whether he was infected or not. The 
former tests were no longer sufficient. Words and 
phrases which had hitherto borne but one meaning 
were now found to admit of several ; and the Bishops 
and clergy were too honest to allow a man to say one 
thino; with his tongue while in his heart he meant an- 



1 " Records of the Church " (Oxford), No. XIV 



2 



26 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

other. It was thus that Creeds became lengthened and 
clauses were added to meet the presumptuous specu- 
lations of human reason. But the fault was with the 
heretics, not with the Church. Her great object from 
the beg inning had been unity." * 

There was something, too, in the changing character 
of the age which produced this result. It had been an 
era of self-denial, and devotion, and active labor, when 
the great truths which it taught were regarded as themes 
for adoration, not for dispute. At length, when the 
hand of persecution was withdrawn, men turned to the 
deeper and more abstruse doctrines of our faith, and 
made them the points of irreverent inquiry. The East 
was always the fatal and prolific soil of speculative con- 
troversy, and, on this occasion, the question of the Trin- 
ity was the one destined to give birth to the element of 
disunion in the Christian world. 

It was caused by the rashness of Alexander, Bishop 
of Alexandria, who, preaching in the Church of St. 
Mark, in the presence of the Presbytery and the rest of 
his clergy, attempted to explain, with perhaps too philo- 
sophical minuteness, that great theological mystery. 2 
Anns, one of his priests, thinking that the Bishop was 
verging into the Sabellian heresy, opposed him with 
great logical acumen, while, in doing so, he ran into 
the opposite extreme. He had been the competitor of 
the Bishop for the Episcopate, and failed by a very few 
votes. The tradition is, that on the Sunday after this 
discussion Arius was appointed to preach in St. Mark's, 
while the Bishop officiated in the Baucalis. The Bishop, 

1 Burton's "History of the Christian Church," p. 428. 

2 Socrates's "Ecclesiastical History," b. i., chap. v. 



CREEDS. 27 



in his sermon, made no reference to the controversy, 
while Arius availed himself of the opportunity to give 
a full exposition of his views. The consequence was a 
tumult, some of the congregation crying out, " This is 
not the faith we have received from our fathers ; " 
others, " Out with the second Cerinthus ! " " Anathema 
to the new Basileides ! " This commenced the contest. 

The view of Arius was, that " there was a time, be- 
fore the commencement of the ages, when the parent 
Deity dwelt alone in undeveloped, undivided unity. At 
this time, immeasurably, incalculably, inconceivably re- 
mote, the majestic solitude ceased, the Divine Unity was 
broken by an act of the Sovereign Will, and the Only- 
Begotten Son, the Image of the Father, the Yicegerent 
of all the Divine Power, the intermediate Agent in all 
the long-subsequent work of creation, began to beP 1 
The Arian doctrine was summed up in the single sen- 
tence, " There was, when He was not." 2 

At this day, it seems to us like the highest irrever- 
ence thus to dissect, as it were, the nature of the Su- 
preme Being, or to endeavor to deprive it of that vague- 
ness which, to the ordinary mind, constitutes its sub- 
limity. The dispute, indeed, owed its existence to that 
exquisite subtil ty of the Greek language which enabled 
them to draw distinctions which in other tongues could 
not be expressed ; and while for three centuries they 
had bowed with awe before this great truth, looking on 
it only as a fact to be received with the most profound 
reverence, it was now to be subjected to what a writer 
calls " the anatomical precision of philosophic Greek." 

1 " Milman's History, 1 ' vol. ii., p. 68. 

2 Theodoret gives Arius's letter in full, lib. i., chap. v. 



28 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

It is strange that this metaphysical question, so en- 
tirely abstract, which had no relation to anything which 
concerned man's spiritual interests, but referred only to 
" the ineffable relations of the Godhead before the re- 
motest beginning of time," should have awakened an 
excitement which stirred up the most violent passions 
to their highest exercise. " Beginning in the Schools of 
Alexandria, the dispute," says Socrates, " ran through- 
out all Egypt, Libya, and the Upper Thebes, and at 
length diffused itself over the rest of the provinces and 
cities." l It became the absorbing topic of the day, en- 
listing all classes of the people. 2 It excited popular tu- 
mults, leading to conflicts in the streets and in the am- 
phitheatre, which it required the utmost exertions of the 
military authorities to quell. The subject was parodied 
in the theatres by the pagans, who rejoiced to exhibit 
the manner in which the Christians u loved one an- 
other." Verses composed by Arius, and setting forth 
the disputed doctrine, were sung by all classes through 
the whole East. Perhaps nothing so much shocked 
every feeling of reverence in the orthodox mind as 
these doggerel pieces which were called " Thalia." The 
most sacred mysteries of our faith were ridiculed in 
language which had previously been used in the lowest 
ballads, and appropriated to subjects of disgraceful im- 

1 Socrates's " History," chap. vi. 

2 " You know what a hair-splitting, logioizing, philosophical set the 
citizens are — how they hold a logomachy dearer than anything else ; and 
the seed sown by Arius was now bearing most deadly fruit. Merchants, 
lawyers, officers, seemed as much interested in the question as divines, 
and the shops of Alexandria were full of debate on the deepest mysteries 
of religion. Business seemed in abeyance ; polemical reasoning took its 
place." — ("The Quay of the Dioscuri," p. 19.) 



CREEDS; 29 



parity. We give a modern version of some of the most 
innocent of these stanzas, that our readers may judge of 
their character : 

" A greater set of nonsense 

Was surely never heard ; 
Incredible and silly, 

Preposterous, absurd! 
Such stuff as is rejected 

By very boys at school ; 
Such mysteries as can only 

Be handled by a fool. 

"Be men, be men, Egyptians! 

Or, rather than such lore, 
Turn back again to Apis 

And Isis as of yore. 
They never, in the old times, 

That saw King Pharaoh's court, 
Bowed down before the folly 

That Catholics support." 

At the close of the Council of Nice, the book was 
burned by authority, and became so rare that Sozomen 
had never seen it, though he had heard of it. 1 

The dispute seems, indeed, to have excited a perfect 
popular furor. As an historian of the fourth century 
describes the excitement in Constantinople, so was it 
through every city of the East : " Every corner, every 
alley of the city was full of these discussions — the 
streets, the market-places, the drapers, the money- 
changers, the victual ers. Ask a man, ' How many 
oboli \ ' he answers by dogmatizing on generated and 
ungenerated being. Inquire the price of bread, and 
you are told, ' The Son is subordinate to the Father.' 

1 Sozomen's " History," L, 22. 



30 THE CHURCH OF TEE APOSTLES. 

Ask if the bath is ready, and you are told, ' The Son 
arose ont of nothing.' " * 

We might, perhaps, expect some excitement among 
the versatile, imaginative children of the East, but the 
strangest feature in the history of this doctrine was its 
spread through the distant West, among those whose 
more practical character of thought would have saved 
them, we should suppose, from such fine-drawn the- 
ories. This difference in the mental constitution of 
the East and the West had been noticed as far back as 
the days of Aristotle, who speaks of the contrast be- 
tween " the savage energy and freedom of Europe and 
the intellectual repose and apathy of Asia." 2 The Ori- 
entals were the successors of the Greek Sophists, who 
in the Garden and the Porch once disputed on the re- 
fined theories of Plato, and, now that Philosophy had 
given place to the doctrines of our Faith, they subjected 
them to the same intellectual crucible. They cared 
more for accuracy in the minute tenets of Christianity 
than for that wide-spread hold upon the world which 
was the object of the Latin Church. There was a sig- 
nincancy, therefore, in the title assumed by the Eastern 
Church, " Orthodox," while the West prided itself upon 
the title of " Catholic." 

Egypt and Syria were always the homes of that 
dreamy repose which was developed into the monastic 
system of Oriental Christendom, and which, though 
transplanted into the West, found its most congenial 
soil in the caves of the Nile, or on the mountain-ranges 
of Lebanon. The bold energy and commanding action 

1 Grog. Xyss., quoted by Stanley, "Eastern Church," p. 175. 
s Aristotle, Fol. vii., 1. 



CREEDS. 31 



of Ambrose and Ilildebrand seem the natural results 
of the atmosphere of the West, but in the Latin Church 
we look in vain for the passionless musings of the her- 
mit Anthony in the burning desert of the Thebiad, or 
the lonely devotion of Simeon Stylites on his pillar. 

So, too, was it with that prolific brood of heresies — 
Eutychianism, Nestorianism, and Sabellianism — which 
for centuries convulsed the East, and in their ever- 
changing forms called for Council after Council and 
Synod after Synod, to define their shadowy divergence 
from orthodoxy. In the West they obtained no foot- 
ing, and their names were only known through the 
writings of the Greek controversialists. No Western 
mind could have originated the disputed points of Ori- 
ental metaphysics — " bubbles forming and bursting on 
every wave of human life." Of the swarm of heretics 
who flit across the page of history, almost all are from 
the East. The only distinguished name which comes 
to us from the West is that of Tertullian, when in his 
latter days he became a Montanist. 

Arianism was the only strange exception to this 
rule of national character ; it spread widely through the 
West, and, when the torrent of Gothic invasion poured 
down upon Italy, the Romans found to their surprise 
that their conquerors were not only nominal Christians 
like themselves, but had adopted also the heresy of 
Arius. " These rude nations fell off from the faith of 
the Church, as from a system too exalted for them, into 
the impieties of Arianism." 1 St. Augustine, in his 
" City of God," pays his tribute to the clemency of 
Alaric and his followers in sparing the Churches dur- 

1 Bowden's " Life of Gregory VII.," vol. i., p. 30. 



32 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

ing the sack of Borne. " The name of Christ rose 
swelling above the wild dissonance of the captured 
city." It was, however, owing to the fact that they 
shared in the same faith with the conquered Romans. 
But Ulfilas, the Apostle of the Goths, who first trans- 
lated the Scriptures into their tongue, was an Arian, 
and from him they had received their belief. 

So was it with Genseric, the conqueror of Africa. 
The North of Africa bowed to this heresy, and even 
from the Churches of Carthage, built in memory of St. 
Cyprian, the orthodox were expelled by the Vandal 
King Honoricus, and the Arians put in possession. Nor 
were they recovered until nearly a century had passed, 
and Belisarius took Carthage and drove the Vandals 
out of Africa. The fierce Lombards, too, shared in 
that heresy, as did Theodoric the Great, King of Italy ; 
and it is not saying too much to state that the strongest 
hold of Arianism was in Spain and Southern France. 
At one time, indeed, the greater part of the Western 
world acknowledged that belief. 

But, in thus narrating the triumphs of Arianism in 
Western Europe and Northern Africa, we have antici- 
pated its history in the following century. We return, 
therefore, to its origin. 

The anathemas of the Church at once expelled Arius 
from its fold, because, in the language of that doeu- 
ment, " he had dared to utter his blasphemies against 
the Divine Redeemer." But his doctrines, as we have 
shown, lived and found a congenial atmosphere through 
the East, until at length an appeal was made to the 
Emperor to heal the wounds of the divided Chinch. 
He attempted the work, but his envoy to Egypt, Hosius 



CREEDS. 33 



of Cordova, the most eminent of the Spanish Bishops, 
met with no success, thongh he bore a letter from the 
Emperor, entreating them to "cease vain contentions 
about words, and to return to the harmony which be- 
came their common faith." 1 

But Constantine was a late convert from Paganism, 
and the first Christian Emperor found himself unable 
to settle the disputes of the fold to which he had joined 
himself. We may believe, too, from his own expres- 
sions, that it was with bitter - disappointment he. found 
the Christian Church rent asunder by what to him 
seemed empty controversies. " You, Alexander,'- he 
says in his address to the contending parties, " mooting 
a subject improper for discussion ; you, Arms, rashly 
giving expression to a view of the matter, such as ought 
either never to have been conceived,. or if, indeed, it had 
been suggested to your mind, it became you to bury in 
silence." And then he makes the appeal to them : " Re- 
turn again to a state of reconciliation, and by so doing 
give back to me tranquil days and nights free from 
care. If this should not be effected, I must necessarily 
groan and be wholly suffused with tears." 2 

But one resource, therefore, remained ; and this, for 
the first time since the birth of Christianity, was adopt- 
ed. By Imperial mandate, a General Council of the 
heads of the different Christian communities through- 
out the Roman Empire was summoned, to establish, on 
the united authority of assembled Christendom, the 
true doctrine on these contested points ; and to this we 

1 Socrates, lib. i., chap. vii. 

2 Socrates, lib. i., chap. vii. Euscbius gives the whole letter in " Yit. 
Const," ii., 68. 



3i THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

owe the second Creed in our Service, which still from 
this Council bears the name of the Nicene Creed. 

It was in the month of May, a. d. 325, that this 
Great Council met at Nicaea, in Bithynia. There seemed 
a special wisdom in the choice of place. It was but 
twenty miles from Kicomedia, which shortly before 
had been selected as the Capital of the East. Near 
enough, therefore, for easy access of the Emperor, so 
that, to use his own words, " he might be at hand as a 
spectator and participate in what was done," it was not 
so near that the influence of the Court could overshadow 
their deliberations. Perhaps the name itself may have 
had some influence in determining the place. " It is a 
city," said the Emperor, " fitting for the Synod, called 
after Victory, ' the City of Victory,' or ' Nicaea. 5 " ' 

Fifteen centuries have passed away, and still the 
ancient city of Nicsea stands, a monument of the Great 
Council, yet how changed from what it once was ! 
Then, high above all other buildings, rose the great 
dome of the Church of the Eternal Wisdom, and on 
each side of it were the remains of the old heathen 
temples of Victory, and Juno, and Apollo, their broken 
porticoes still beautiful in ruin. But time has swept 
all these away. At the close of the thirteenth century, 
on the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, Nicaea 
fell before the arms of Orchan, the Ottoman leader, 
and he at once transformed it into a Moslem city. The 
Church of the Council was turned by him into a mosque, 
the symbol of Islam was substituted for the mosaic 
images on its walls, and, amid the rubbish which now 
marks its site, Orchan's name appears sculptured over 
1 Eusebius, "Vifc Const.; 1 Iii., 0. 



CREEDS. 35 



the doorway. Attached to this mosque, the first Otto- 
man college was founded. " In this place," says Yan 
Hammer, " where the Bishops had been compelled, on 
pain of deposition and exile, to renounce their heresy 
and subscribe the Nicene Formulary, Christian children, 
destined to recruit the ranks of the Janizaries, were 
now forced to forswear their faith." 

Nature, indeed, is unchanged, and, as the traveler 
now approaches the ruined city, he sees the same grand 
features of the landscape which must have arrested the 
gaze of those who had then gathered from every part 
of Christendom — above the city, the wooded slopes 
of the mountains covered by the chestnut-forests ; at 
their base, the Arcanian Lake communicating with the 
Sea of Marmora ; and, in the distance, the classical 
Olympus, with its snowy peaks looking down on the 
wide stretch of hill and valley. Around the city still 
remain the same ancient rectangular walls, which seem 
the inclosure of a w x ild and forsaken chase, for within 
all is ruin and desolation. Prostrate columns and shat- 
tered walls, which Nature is covering with her rich verd- 
ure, and tangled vines twining over the broken arches, 
fill the space. No sound of human life is heard, till 
with toil and labor the centre of the city is reached, 
and there is Isnik, a miserable Turkish village, " stand- 
ing within the walls, which form a circuit of four miles 
around it." 1 Near it, surrounded by ruined mosques, 
is the only monument of old Christian times, the de- 
serted Church dedicated to " the repose of the Virgin." 2 
Here the Moslem pilgrims search for the tombs of some 

1 Sir Charles Fellows's " Travels in Lycia," p. S3. 

2 Stanley's "Eastern Church," p. 172. 



36 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

of the heroes of their early history, or the traveler 
from the West endeavors to trace the faint memorials 
of the city once so famous in Ecclesiastical History. 

Yet that was a scene of stirring life when the first 
Great Council gathered there. More than three hundred 
Bishops were present, and presbyters and deacons with- 
out number. They came from all parts of the world, 
from the distant East and the scarcely-known West. 
John the Persian stood side by side with Theophilus the 
Goth, from the extreme Korth. Alexander of Alexan- 
dria was there, to aid in allaying the tempest his own 
rashness had raised ; and there, too. was Arius, ready 
to defend his doctrine. He was marked by his Asiatic 
dress and the wildness of his appearance, as if he was 
" in the world, yet not of the world." And face to 
face with him was Athanasius, then a young deacon, 
yet showing in that early day the same intellectual force 
and energy which in after-years made him the Great 
Defender of the Faith. Probably, notwithstanding his 
youth, he was the master-mind of the assembly, and in 
the Iberian convent at Mount Athos is an ancient fres- 
coed picture of the Council, which represents him seated 
on the ground in his deacon's dress writing out the 
Creed. Perhaps this painting embodies the idea which 
was entertained through the East of his share in this 
great work. The hermit Bishops came from their Egyp- 
tian caves to meet the astute logicians from Alexandria 
and Antioch. Many of them bore the marks of having 
suffered for the faith, for the days of martyrdom had 
not long since ceased, and there were those still living 
who had passed through the great persecution of Dio- 
cletian. 



CREEDS. 37 



" There were among the Bishops," says Socrates, 
" two of extraordinary celebrity : Paphnutius, Bishop of 
Upper Thebes ; and Spiridon, Bishop of Cyprus." The 
former had lost an eye in the persecutions, and was 
esteemed for his wonderful sanctity. The latter was 
taken from his sheepfold to be made a Bishop, and " on 
account of his extreme humility he continued to feed 
his sheep during his prelacy." To both were ascribed 
the power of working miracles. 1 But the time would 
fail us to mention even the prominent members of that 
body. Their names are written in the chronicles of the 
times, yet they sound strange to us as they come down 
through the intervening centuries. 2 

Socrates likens the Council to that great multitude 
which, on the day of Pentecost, listened to the preach- 
ing of St. Peter, composed of " devout men of every 
nation under heaven ; except," he says, " that congre- 
gation was inferior in this respect, that all present were 
not ministers of God, whereas in this assembly, besides 
the Bishops, was an almost incalculable number of pres- 
byters, deacons, and acolyths, attending them." 3 

The historian Eusebius 4 describes the scene, at which 
he was present, as being himself deeply impressed with 

1 Socrates, lib. i., chap. x. and xi. 

2 It is perhaps a great loss that the Church history of Philostorgius 
has not been preserved. It was favorable to the Arians, but nothing re- 
mains except a few fragments copied in Photius. 

3 Socrates, lib. i., chap. viii. 

4 There were two of the most prominent members of the Council bear- 
ing this name. This one, Eusebius the historian, Bishop of Cassarea, 
acted with the orthodox party, though he was said to be a semi-Arian. 
The other Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, was an Arian, and, as will be 
seen in the further pages of this narrative, was one of the most active 
partisans on that side. 



38 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

its solemnity. At its first meeting the assembly sat in 
profound silence, while the great officers of state and 
other dignified persons entered the hall and awaited " in 
proud and trembling expectation " the appearance of 
the Emperor of the world in a Christian Council. At 
length he entered, wearing the Imperial diadem — a light 
crown of gold, set with rubies and sapphires alternately — 
and his dress of purple blazing with gold embroidery and 
precious stones. The whole assembly at once rose to do 
him honor. He advanced to a low, golden seat prepared 
for him, but did not take it till a sign of permission 
had been given by the Bishops. u Such," says Socrates, 1 
" was the respect and reverence which the Emperor en- 
tertained for these men." On the one side of him sat 
Hosius of Spain, who had been his legate to Egypt in 
the vain attempt to settle this difficulty, and on his right 
was his Eastern favorite, Eusebius of Cresarea, " the 
father of ecclesiastical history." 

1 Socrates, " Hist.," lib. i., chap. viii. This was a reverence which the 
Church in that age always claimed from civil rulers. Gibbon says : " In 
the Christian Church, which intrusts the service of the altar to a, perpetual 
succession of consecrated ministers, the monarch, whose spiritual rank is 
less honorable than that of the meanest deacon, was seated below the 
rails of the sanctuary and confounded with the rest of the faithful multi- 
tude. The Emperor might be saluted as the father of his people, but he 
owed filial duty and reverence to the Fathers of the Church." — (" History," 
chap, xx.) 

When the Emperor Theodosius had entered the chancel to present of- 
ferings, he remained. St. Ambrose asked him what he wanted, and on 
his replying that he remained for the purpose of partaking of the Holy 
Mysteries, he directed the deacon to address him in the following words : 
" The priests alone, Emperor, are permitted to enter within the pali- 
sades of the altar ; all others must not approach it. Retire, then, and 
remain with the rest of the laity. A purple robe makes Emperors, but 
not priests." — (Theodoret, lib. v., chap, xviii.) 



CREEDS. 39 



One of the leading prelates — probably Eusebius — 
commenced the proceedings with a short address to the 
Emperor, followed by a hymn to God. Constantine 
then delivered an exhortation to unity in the Latin lan- 
guage, which was interpreted to the Greek Bishops. It 
displayed a Christian spirit which it would have been 
well for them to have imitated. " The moment," he 
says, " which I shall consider the chief fulfillment of 
my prayers will be when I see you all joined together 
in heart and soul, and determining on one peaceful har- 
mony for all, which would well become you who are 
consecrated to God, to preach to others." l 



The Council sat for more than two months, and, 
as we before stated, the Nicene Creed was the result 
of its solemn deliberations, while the anathema of the 
Church was pronounced against Arius and his adher- 
ents. In the midst of the excitement of their debates, 
Eusebius proposed a Creed which had " existed before 
the rise of controversy." It was one which, he subse- 
quently said, in an Epistle to his diocese, when describ- 
ing the proceedings of the Council, " he had received 
from the Bishops who were his predecessors, in the rudi- 
ments of which he was instructed when he was baptized, 
and which, both as a presbyter and when placed in the 
Episcopal office, he had believed and taught." 2 Of this, 
as an historical fact, there can be no doubt, since all to 
whom he made the statement in his Diocese of Csesarea 
must have been acquainted with the existence of this 
Creed and able to confirm this assertion. It was adopted 
with some slight alterations, and, therefore, was almost 

1 Eusebius's "Vit. Const.," iii., 12. 

2 Theodoret, lib. i., chap. xii. 



40 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

identical with the Nicene Creed as we have received 
it. It must have been an early formulary of doctrine 
adopted in the cradle of our faith — the land of Pal- 
estine. The Mcene Creed, therefore, has an antiqui- 
ty far beyond the date of its formal adoption at jSTi- 
ceea. 

The Creed was intended, as we can at once perceive, 
to guard the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity by all that 
language can effect. It declares that he is " God of 
God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, 
not made, being of one substance with the Father." 
Three hundred and eighteen Bishops confirmed the 
Creed by their signatures, and thus was recorded the 
united voice of the Christian Church. 

The Creed is that we still use, except that for the 
last division, which was afterward added at the Council 
of Constantinople, a. d. 3S1, there originally stood the 
words : " But those who say that there was a time when 
He was not, and before His generation He was not, and 
He was formed out of nothing, or that He was of an- 
other essence or hypostasis, or that the Son of God is 
created, or is changeable, or is mutable, the Holy Catho- 
lic and Apostolic Church anathematizes. " 

Another change is the insertion of the word filioque 
to declare the procession of the Holy Ghost, "from the 
Father and the Son." When this was done, it would 
be difficult to tell. Its adoption grew up gradually in 
the West of Europe, but it was certainly not until the 
eighth century that it received any authoritative in- 
dorsement. Creeping into the Creed in this way, it is 
now, unfortunately, the most serious obstacle to the 
communion of the Greek Church with our own. They 



CREEDS. 41 



say, and justly, that it should not have been added with- 
out the direction of an (Ecumenical Council. 

The difficulty of coming to some agreement in the 
Council arose not from open antagonism of opinion, for 
this could have been met by argument. It was caused 
by the dishonest ingenuity of the Arians in professing 
their willingness to accept the orthodox language, while 
they secretly gave it a different meaning. In a work 
of fiction, whose object is to picture the proceedings of 
those times, 3 there is a most truthful view given of these 
ceaseless evasions of the adherents of Arms in offering 
to subscribe to articles of the Creed which, with a men- 
tal reservation, they held in a different sense. We will 
give a scene from this work to illustrate this point. 

" It was now wished to draw up a Creed which 
should serve to express the faith of the Church, and 
which should yet be accepted — if it might be so — by 
all the Prelates. The only difficulty was that which 
concerned the Son of God, to use language which could 
not be distorted, and which yet, in its declarations, 
should be simple and short. 

" Alexander had been speaking, and he now con- 
cluded by proposing that the Council should simply de- 
clare the Son of God to be God. 

" There was a great shout of applause. ' It is the 
faith of Peter ! It is the faith of Paul ! Anathema to 
him that gainsays ! ' 

" ' My brother of Mcomedia,' said the President, £ has 

1 " The Quay of the Dioscuri," London, 1860. Although this account 
is given in the form of fiction, yet it is entirely based on the statements 
made by Athanasius, where all these evasions and references to texts are 
narrated. — (" De Decret. Nic.," sec. 19.) 



42 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

it your approbation that this sacred Council, inspired by 
the Holy Ghost, should declare the Son to be God?' 

" ' I would so declare it with pleasure,' said Euse- 
bius ; ' but, before I commit myself farther, I would, 
with your Brotherliness's permission, consult with those 
with whom I usually act.' 

" Accordingly, he and several other of the Arian 
leaders formed a circle toward the left-hand upper cor- 
ner of the hall, and seemed very eager in debate. Arias, 
Theonas of Marmarica, and Menophantus of Ephesus, 
appeared the most emphatic speakers. At the end of 
about a quarter of an hour, Eusebius of ^sicomedia 
came forward, and the others resumed their seats. 

" ' We are content,' said he, ' that this should be so 
expressed in the Creed : " I believe in the Son of God, 
God Himself.'" 

" There was great applause, and I really thought 
that the two parties were coming to an agreement. 
But Athanasius seemed very ill at ease ; he passed be- 
hind the golden throne, and spoke hastily to the leg- 
ates. In another minute Hosius said, ' Have I your 
Brotherliness's leave to ask Arius a question I ' 

" ' Surely,' replied Eustathius. 

" i Arius,' said he, i do I understand you also to af- 
firm that the Son of God is God ? ' 

" ' I am ready to swear my belief in it,' replied he. 

" ' And you would repeat the words as I have re- 
peated them 1 ' 

" ' Surely — why not ? Is it not written in your 
law, " I said, ye are gods \ " If he then called them 
gods—' 

" Eusebius of Caesarea darted an indignant glance 



CREEDS. 43 



at Arius. So this was what they meant, this the grand 
truth so carefully to be embodied in the Creed, that, as 
they were called gods, so was the Eternal Word God — 
so, and not otherwise ! 

" ' Out with the Egyptian ! Out with the heretic ! ' 
was the cry. 

" ' This will not do,' said Hosius ; ' in the same 
sense we may affirm any holy man to be God.' 

" ' Say,' said Leontius of Csesarea, ' that He is al- 
ways God.' 

" ' I do say so,' replied Arius. 

" ' Nothing clearer,' cried Menophantus. 

" ' Does this great and holy Synod adopt that ex- 
pression % ' asked the president. 

" ' Remembering,' said Arius, ' that it is written, 
" We which live are always." x Our Lord is, as I have 
expressed it, God ; He lives God, therefore He is al- 
ways God.' 

" ' I affirm,' said Alexander, ' that He is very God 
of very God.' 

" ' I affirm the like,' retorted Eusebius of Nicome- 
dia ; ' if He has verily been so made, verily He so is. 
Why, the majority would be satisfied with nothing less 
than calling Him consubstantial with the Father.' 

" ' Let us say so ! ' cried Athanasius. 

" ' The Holy Ghost speaks by Athanasius ! ' was the 
cry. ' Athanasius a second Peter ! ' ' Athanasius an- 
other Paul ! ' ' Let us worship the consubstantial ! ' " ' 

The great point of dispute ultimately turned on an 
i in the word which was used to assert the inherent 
Divinity of our Lord. The word for which the ortho- 

1 2 Cor. iv. 11. 



4± THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

dox contended was homousios (of the same substance), 
while that put forward by the Arians was homoiusios 
(of like substance). The former was expressed by the 
word consubstantial, adopted by the Council, but bit- 
terly opposed by the Arians. It had been unwittingly 
suggested by the Arians themselves, and caught up and 
used by the orthodox. In the English version of the 
Creed it is expressed by the phrase, u Being of one sub- 
stance with the Father." The tradition always has been 
that Eusebius of Nieomedia first altered the document 
by secretly inserting the i before he signed it. The 
scene is thus pictured in the work to which we have 
before referred : 

" On the next morning Constantine, who had in the 
mean while received warning that if he were not there 
the session was likely to be a stormy one, was present. 
At first matters proceeded tranquilly enough. The 
Creed was produced, read over, and then the signatures 
were called for. And, for two hours, Metropolitan 
after Metropolitan, and Bishop after Bishop, came up 
to the little table of signature, took pen in hand, and 
affixed his name. The recusants held back to the last. 

" There were seventeen. Eusebius of Xicomedia 
was their spokesman. 

" After much disputing, ' I entreat you,' he cried, 
' august Emperor, not to drive us to stand at bay. AVe 
have done good service to your throne ; we have ever 
prayed for your life and that of your august family ; 
we have labored for the propagation of the true faith ; 
and now, for a word unknown to — unknown to ? — 
rather rejected by, our fathers, we are to be made of- 
fenders.' 



CREEDS. 45 



" Hosius was about to reply, but the Emperor rose. 
; Tins great and oecumenical Synod,' said he, ' has been 
the mouth ; I am but the hand. What it confirms with 
the sword of the Spirit I will ratify by the carnal 
weapon. I pronounce no theological judgment, but the 
Bishop that signs not the symbol is sent into exile.' 
The resolute manner in which he spoke showed that no 
entreaties could move him. 

" After an hour's weary discussion twelve more 
signed. And now there were but five dissentients, 
Ensebius of Nicomedia, Theognius of Mcsea, Maris of 
Chalcedon, and Secundus and Theonas of Lybia. 

" For some time I thought that these five would 
have remained firm, but the love of the world was too 
strong in Eusebius. Just as the Emperor was about to 
declare the session at an end, he advanced to the table. 
For a moment his hand was held over the symbol it- 
self, as if he were diligently perusing it ; he then signed 
hastily, and Maris and Theognius followed his example. 

" Eusebius had inserted an i, thus turning homousios 
into homoiiisios ; * as if they could thus cheat the 



Searcher of hearts. But the guile answered in this 
world." 

It shows the Oriental character of the Council, that, 
of all the Bishops who signed the Creed, only eight 
were from the "West. The Greek, too, in which it was 
written it would have been impossible to translate into 
the Latin or Teutonic languages. The expressions are 
too subtile to be represented in any other tongue, and 
the fine-drawn distinctions (like the i on which the 

1 As a matter of history, this change is mentioned by Philostorgius, 
i, 3. 



46 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

contest turned) with regard to our Lord's union of na- 
tures defied the attempts of the "Western theologians to 
explain them in their language. They were obliged, 
therefore, to coin new forms of speech, Greek in their 
character, which often were but an approximation to 
what had been fully set forth in the delicate idioms of 
the original text. " The West," says Milman, " accept- 
ed the Creed, which its narrow and barren vocabulary 
could hardly express in adequate terms." ' 

There was one point of difference between the con- 
tending parties at Nicsea so marked, that it deserves 
our serious attention. The orthodox Fathers did not 
reason from their own interpretation of Scripture, or 
base their arguments upon it. They bore witness to a 
simple matter of fact, that the doctrine they avowed 
had been received by them from the generations before 
them, and they knew of no other as ever existing in 
their respective Churches. On the contrary, the handful 
of men at the Council who advocated Arianism made 
no appeal to uninterrupted tradition ; they only argued 
from their own views of Scripture. They might have 
been included among those to whom Shakespeare re- 
fers, who live — 

" As the world were now but to begin, 
Antiquity forgot, custom not known."* 3 

The contrast is strikingly referred to in one of the 
treatises of Athanasius, when he points out to the Ari- 
ans the fact that they had dated one of their confes- 
sions of faith by the consulate of the current year. 

1 " Latin Christianity," i., 59. 

2 " Hamlet." act iv., scene v. 



CREEDS. 47 



" Having composed," he said, " a creed according to 
tlieir tastes, they headed it with mention of the Consul, 
and the month, and the day, as if to suggest to all men 
of understanding that now, from the time of Constan- 
tius, not before, their faith dates its origin. . . . On 
the other hand, at Mcsea, many as were the framers of 
the Creed, they ventured nothing such as these three 
or four men have ventured. They did not care to head 
it with consulate, month, and day, but said, ' Thus be- 
lieves the Catholic Church ; ' nor had they any delay 
in stating what they believed, in proof that their views 
were not novel but Apostolical. And what they set 
down was no discovery of theirs, but the doctrine which 
was taught by the Apostles." 1 

And this principle on which they acted was not a 
mere vague and floating opinion. On the contrary, 
they regarded their interpretation of the doctrine which 
they embodied in the Creed as one fixed and recog- 
nized, formally committed to the guardianship of every 
Bishop everywhere, and by him made over to his suc- 
cessor. And we know that such a deposit did exist ; 
and such a traditio or transmission, with regard to fun- 
damental doctrines, was formally observed in and from 
the Apostolic age. Each Bishop appointed to watch for 
the welfare of the Christian Church " marked well her 
bulwarks, and set up her houses, that he might tell them 
that come after P 2 

There can be no doubt but that each branch of the 
Church had its own distinct line of traditionary teach- 
ing from the Apostles. It is to this, perhaps, that St. 

1 " De Synod.," 3-5. 

2 Psalm xlviii. 12 (Prayer-Book version). 



43 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

Jude refers, when he urges the duty of " earnestly con- 
tending for the faith which was once delivered" We 
may believe, then, that the unanimity which prevailed 
in the Council of Nice was something higher than a 
mutual sacrifice of differences for the sake of peace. 
It had more weight than the mere decision of a major- 
ity, no matter how large. It was the joint testimony 
of the many branches of the Church represented by 
their Bishops as independent witnesses, to the separate 
existence in each of them, from time immemorial, of 
the doctrine in which they found they all agreed. 1 

For many reasons the Council of Nice was the most 
remarkable body which had ever met in the Church. 
It proclaimed to the world a startling announcement. 
For three centuries the Church and the Roman Empire 
had been growing up side by side, engaged in a cease- 
less struo-o'le for the direction of the human mind. 
Here we have the first public and acknowledged con- 
fession that the Church had conquered. " The weak 
things of this world had confounded the strong ; " and 
when at Nicaea the Emperor of all the known world 
bowed before the spiritual authority of the Council, we 
may feel that ths victory, to achieve which so many 
had laid down their lives, had been won at last. 

During these passing centuries, too, filled as they 
were with striking incidents in those days of heroic 
faith and bitter persecution, nothing stands out promi- 
nent. In every part of the world to which the Gospel 
had gone, whether amid the palaces of the Imperial 
City, on the plains of India, or in the forests of West- 
ern Europe, there is the same story : on the one hand, 

1 British Critic, vol. xx, p. 192. 



CREEDS. 49 



the attempt to crush the Faith, and on the other, the 
sublime endurance of its followers — the ceaseless strug- 
gle between the Old World and the New-born Church. 

But there is no central point of interest or influence. 
At Mcssa a new era was inaugurated. For the first 
time the Church, as it were, emerges from the chaos, 
and, uniting its voice with that of the Empire, points 
out the path its followers were to tread in coming cen- 
turies. There was a significance, therefore, in the title 
it assumed, " The Great and Holy Synod." 

And to this day, in the Eastern Church, this Creed 
retains the power it had when first announced by the 
mandate of the Roman Emperor. Among the many 
millions of the Greek Church it is the one bond of 
faith. " It is still recited in its original tongue by the 
peasants of Greece ; its recitation is still the culminat- 
ing point of the Service in the Church of Russia. The 
great bell of the Kremlin Tower sounds during the 
whole time that its words are chanted. It is repeated 
aloud in the presence of the assembled people by the 
Czar at his coronation ; it is worked in pearls on the 
robes of the highest dignitaries of Moscow. The an- 
niversary of the Council is still celebrated on special 
days. Every article of the Mcene Creed is exhibited, 
according to the fashion of the Russian Church, in little 
pictures, and thus familiarized to the popular mind." 1 

And so through the West. Wherever the Church of 
England is planted — in India and Australia, in Africa, in 
the isles of the Southern Ocean, and over the wide ex- 
panse of this continent — this Creed is incorporated in the 
Liturgy, and looked upon as the measure of faith. It is 

1 Stanley's " Eastern Church," p. 148. 



50 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

the tie which, more than anything else, unites us to 
the distant East — to the Churches of Constantinople 
and Antioch. The Greek Church has never formally 
received the Apostles' and Athanasian Creeds as a 
part of its ritual. The Mcene alone is common to all 
Christendom. The very place it occupies in the Com- 
munion Service, and the direction to recite it before the 
administration of the Eucharist, is derived from the 
Greek Church, " to guard that ordinance against Arian 
intruders." * There was, therefore, a prophecy, which 
fifteen hundred years have verified, in that declaration 
of Athanasius, " The word of the Lord, which was 
given in the (Ecumenical Council of Xicsea, remaineth 
forever." 

And now, in concluding this sketch, will some of 
our readers ask, " What was the future history of 
Arms ? " Though condemned by the Council, the evil 
he had done lived after him. His heresy spread, as we 
have shown, and had its strongest hold in the West of 
-Europe, where the Gothic tribes had received it from 
their earliest teachers. And so it continued for nearly 
two centuries after the adoption of the Creed at Nicaea ; 
nor did it end in France until Clovis, on the field of 
Youille, struck down the power of the Arian Visi- 
goths, and their leader died by his hand. In Spain it 
was dominant until, in the sixth century, King Recared, 
in the Cathedral at Toledo, professed his submission to 
the Catholic Church. 2 Thenceforth Arianism seems to 

1 In the Communion Service of the Church of England it is so pre- 
scribed. In the American Church the choice is allowed in the Communion 
Service between the Xicene and the Apostles' Creeds. 

8 Stanley's "Eastern Church," p. 152. 



CREEDS. 51 



have lost its vitality, until it gradually ceased to be 
numbered among the recognized heresies of the day. 

But Arius himself had passed the culminating point 
of his notoriety. For a while he remained in Alexan- 
dria, vainly striving to be received once more into com- 
munion with the Church by Athanasius, who had suc- 
ceeded Alexander in his Episcopal office. Thence, about 
ten years after the Council, by the advice of Eusebius 
of Nicomedia, he removed to Constantinople. There 
the influence of his friends was exerted in his behalf 
with the Emperor, and on his being admitted to an in- 
terview, Arius so earnestly avowed his belief in the 
Catholic faith, " deceitfully imitating," says Theodoret, 
" the language of the Holy Scriptures," that the scru- 
ples of the Emperor were swept away, and he com- 
manded Arius to be received again to the communion 
of the Church. The words in which he delivered his 
decision were characterized by an anxiety and earnest- 
ness which subsequent events almost elevated to the 
dignity of prophecy. " Arius," said he, " has well 
sworn, if his words had no double meaning ; otherwise, 
God will avenge." Unceasing, indeed, were the en- 
treaties of the Bishop Alexander, that the Emperor 
would not inflict this disgrace upon the Church ; but 
all were without effect, and the day was appointed for 
his reception, which his friends were to celebrate by a 
triumphal procession through the streets. 

The previous night was passed by the aged Bishop 
in prayer in the Church of Peace, accompanied by two 
other Bishops, Hermogenes of Cappadocia and James of 
Nisibis. There, before the holy doors of the altar, 
they knelt, while twenty-four priests were kneeling be- 



52 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

hind them, and the multitude which filled the Church 
kept a solemn silence, as hour after hour their prayers 
ascended on high. The night went on, and the morn- 
ing light stole in, and still Alexander, though fourscore- 
and-eight years old, kept his vigil, and the ceaseless pe- 
tition of the aged man was, " If Arius is to be joined to 
the Church to-morrow dismiss me Thy servant ; or cut 
off Arius, lest, if he enter into communion with Thy 
Church, heresy enter also I" 1 

The day broke, and over the whole city was heard 
the music of trumpets, and flutes, and hautboys, as the 
procession wound around through the streets. Prom 
the Emperor's palace it was to make the circuit of the 
city to the Great Church. On the procession swept, 
through the long street of St. Irene, till it reached the 
Great Square and wound around the Porphyry Pillar of 
Constantino. 

Arius, Eusebius, Euzo'ius, and other leaders, came 
almost at the end. The church was nearly reached, and 
the moment of their triumph was at hand, when Arius 
complained of sudden illness, and had to be taken into 
a house near by. Then the procession halted, and a 
strange hush and silence fell upon the square, until in 
a few moments the announcement went forth, " Arius 
is dead ! " And so it was. " Immediately," it is written, 
" he fell down and burst asunder and expired." 2 Thus 
he died the death of Judas Iscariot. 

That night hymns of praise ascended in the Church, 
and the aged Bishop returned thanks to God that his 
prayer had been answered, the Church been freed from 

1 Theodoret, lib. i., chap. xiv. 

2 Athanasius, lib. L, p. 670. 



CREEDS. 53 

its threatened disgrace, and lie who so long hindered the 
truth " had been taken out of the way." " This was 
not," says Theodoret, " because he rejoiced at the death 
of Arius — far from it, for all men must die ; but it was 
because his mode of death surpassed the judgment of 
man." x They glorified God, because so evidently " lie 
had visited His people." 



A few years later and another Creed was put forth, 
rather as the amplification and explanation of the M- 
cene. Probably that refinement of Eastern dialects to 
which we have before alluded, in many cases allowed 
the heretical to repeat the Nicene Creed, while men- 
tally they affixed a different meaning to its words. 
This, therefore, was placed beyond a doubt by the 
Creed called the Athanasian, which gradually made its 
way into the Church and became an acknowledged 
Creed of the West. It is a portion of the Ritual of the 
Church of England, though not retained in the Ameri- 
can Church. For many centuries, through the Middle 
Ages, it was believed to be the work of Athanasius 
himself. Even the English Reformers supposed it to 
be from his hand. But this is disproved by internal evi- 
dence. The phraseology is often that which Athanasius 
would not have used, while the assertion of the Double 
Procession of the Spirit — " the Holy Ghost is of the 
Father and the Son " — would have been disowned by 
him, as it has been by the great body of Oriental Chris- 
tians. 

The learned have now united in the belief that this 

1 Theodoret, lib. i., chap. xii. 



54 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

ancient Hymn, " Quicunque vult," is of a later date. It 
was probably composed by Hilary, 1 Bishop of Aries, in 
Gaul, not earlier than the year 426, nor later than the 
year 430. It was written, therefore, but little more 
than half a century after the death of Athanasius. 2 

And so it has come down to us in its pristine pu- 
rity, unmutilated among all the changes and heresies 
which arose. Martin Luther called it " the bulwark of 
the Apostles' Creed ; " and Calvin, " a sure and fitting in- 
terpreter of the Xicene Creed." It bears the name of 
the great Defender of the Faith, not because it was writ- 
ten by him, but because it is a faithful exposition of 
the doctrines for which he so bravely contended, when 
he stood almost alone — what Milton calls " the sole ad- 
vocate of a discountenanced truth " — when his motto was 
obliged to be, "Athanasius contra mundum," and (in 
the striking words of Hooker) " he had no friend but 
God and death." 3 Hooker, indeed, sums up the history 
of this Creed in a single sentence : " Both in the East 
and West Churches it was accepted as a treasure of in- 
estimable price, by as many as had not given up even 
the very ghost of belief." * 

Such are the three acknowledged Creeds of the Cath- 

1 The authorship of this Creed has of course been the subject of great 
dispute among theologians, but the whole question seems to have been 
exhausted by Waterlaud, vol. iv., p. 21S, u Ed. Van Mildert." His argu- 
ment in behalf of Hilary, once Abbot of Lerins, afterward Bishop of 
Aries, seems to be conclusive. In the historical notice of this point we 
have adopted the argument contained in the Charge of the Archbishop 
(Beresford) of Armagh in IST-i. 

2 According to Socrates, " Eccles. Hist," lib. iv., chap, xx., this took 
place in 371, but Jerome states it to be in 373. 

3 "Eccles. Polity," book v., chap. 42. 4 Ibid. 



CREEDS. 55 



olic Church. Ludolph of Saxony, in his " Life of Christ," 
says : " There are three symbols : the first of the Apos- 
tles, the second of the Mcene Council, the third of St. 
Athanasius ; the first for instruction in the faith, the 
second for explanation of the faith, the third for de- 
fense of the faith." In these, then, the doctrine of the 
Church is contained. They declare the sum of what we 
are to believe concerning the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost. " Enlarged and unfolded during four 
centuries, according to the needs of the Church and the 
various assaults of heresy, these Creeds have been, 
throughout the history of the Church, her possession, 
her sum of truth, her sacred deposit." 1 These the early 
Christians repeated when they met together ; these we 
now profess when we have gathered on each occasion 
of public worship ; these the Church has maintained 
against her adversaries ; these she holds out to her chil- 
dren ; and with these she hopes to meet her Lord when 
He returns to judgment. 



Let us look, then, at the reverence with which these 
Creeds were regarded by the early Church ; how " stead- 
fastly " its members " continued in the Apostles' doc- 
trine." They considered an agreement on these points 
to be fundamental ; as essential to the very being of a 
Christian and his union with the Church. The Creed 
was called the " Eule of Faith," 2 because it was the 
standard and rule by which orthodoxy and heresy were 

1 Moberly's " Forty Days," p. 80. 

2 Bingham's " Orig. Eccles.," lib. x., chap. iii. 



50 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

known and examined. Its profession was esteemed 
necessary to the admission of members into the Church 
of Christ by Baptism. He who deviated from it in any 
point was regarded as one who had cut himself off and 
separated from the communion of the Church. 

Irenseus called it " the unalterable Canon and Rule of 
Faith," and adds, in a passage so truly eloquent that we 
cannot forbear quoting it entire : " This is the message, 
and this the Faith, which the Church has received, and 
which, though dispersed throughout the whole world, she 
sedulously guards, as though she dwelt but in one place, 
believes as uniformly as though she had but one soul 
and the same heart, and preaches, teaches, hands down 
to posterity, as harmoniously as though she had but 
one mouth. 

" True it is, the world's languages are various, but 
the power of the tradition is one and the same. There 
is no difference of faith or tradition, whether in the 
Churches of Germany, or in Spain, or in Gaul, or in the 
East, or in Egypt, or in Africa, or in the more central 
parts of the world ; but as the sun, God's creature, is 
one and the same in all the world, so also the preach- 
ing of the truth shineth everywhere, and lighteth every 
one who will come to the knowledge of the truth. 
Among the rulers of the Church, neither he who is 
powerful in words speaks other doctrine (for no one can 
be above his Master), nor does the weak in the word 
diminish the tradition. For, whereas the faith is one 
and the same, neither he who has much to say concern- 
ing it hath anything over, nor he who speaketh little 
any lack." * 

1 Ircnrcus, lib. i., chap. iii. 



CREEDS. 57 



These were what we have referred to as the golden 
days of the Church ; but now, alas ! — 

" The world is very evil — 
The times are waxing late. 1 ' 

We have fallen upon " the last clays " foretold by 
the Apostle, 1 when scoffers are found to deny each of 
these truths in which the early Christians trusted, and 
what to them were subjects of faith and adoration are 
now flung from lip to lip with irreverent blasphemy. 
Yet, as thus we look out on a world rent by conflicting 
beliefs, where the waves of popular opinion toss wildly 
about, and unity of doctrine is remembered only as 
something belonging to far-distant centuries, is it not 
more necessary than ever that we should cling to these 
ancient forms, which thus have come down to us sanc- 
tioned by the reverence and love of ages ? Is it not a 
blessing that they have been preserved to us, thus to be 
professed when we gather in God's House, so that if the 
living minister should teach anything not sanctioned by 
the faith, the words of the Creed which he is obliged 
to repeat would at once give in their denial ? The 
members of our Church have, therefore, ever before 
them the doctrine of the Apostles — the " old paths " 
are plain in their sight — and in all the essential points 
of faith he who errs must willfully wander from the 
truth. 

The history of the world, indeed, has demonstrated 
the necessity for fixed creeds, to embody doctrine and 
preserve it unimpaired from age to age. Wherever 
they have been abandoned it seems as if all landmarks 

- l 2 Timothy iii. i. 



58 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

had been given up, errors have crept in, and their prod- 
uct has been those thousand forms of heresy which 
now distract the world. The mind of man needs some- 
thing on which to lean — something to relieve it from 
the vague and the indefinite — something fixed and cer- 
tain — and this can only be furnished by these ancient 
formularies, which have come down to us from " our 
fathers' days and the old times before them." Dealing 
only with the essentials of faith, they place before us 
those things which are necessary to salvation — those 
which he who abandons, denies the Lord who bought 
him, and ceases to be a Christian. 

And is it not of importance what we believe ? Does 
the Gospel anywhere indorse that false liberality of 
modern days which would esteem all creeds alike, and 
make all opinions on religion matters of indifference ? 
~No. A Christian disciple is bound to revere and main- 
tain the doctrines of his Divine Master. lie belongs to 
the school of Christ. The truths in which he rests 
have had their origin in Heaven. They are not specu- 
lative refinements, which are matters of fancy, but the v 
constitute the living principles of action in a Chris- 
tian's heart ; and, in proportion to the freeness of their 
action, the}' give a coloring to his whole life, and form 
the character of his future destiny. 

If, indeed, we receive but half of the truth, the de- 
ficiency to us will be made up by a corresponding half 
of error. 1 Would we be safe, therefore, we must go to 

1 " Doctrinal errors ever produce corresponding errors in habits of 
thinking and acting ; and the professor of a corrupted theology, strenu- 
ous as may be his efforts and pure his desires, in vain attempts to reach 
the moral exaltation of him to whom it is permitted to make similar 



CREEDS. 59 



the full extent of all the knowledge which Grod has 
seen fit to communicate. We mnst drink the whole of 
the cup of salvation which He has so bounteously put 
into our hands, and not rest satisfied with a taste on the 
lips, of that which He designs to pervade the whole 
body with life and vitality. And if the Apostle has 
solemnly declared that the heathen are inexcusable in 
neglecting to derive a knowledge of the Godhead from 
His visible works, 1 how much more inexcusable are they 
who refuse to learn truly His revealed will, when it is 
written as with a sunbeam on the pages of His word, 
and the Church, " the pillar and ground of the truth," 
is daily teaching them what it was that Apostles believed, 
and for which confessors and martyrs were willing to 
endure the fire and the stake ! Happy, then, will be 
the blinded heathen — happy the rejecting Jew — com- 
pared with the enlightened Christian, who " continues 
not steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine ! " The truth 
is with him, but he prizes it not, and with light pour- 
ing upon his pathway he treads onward in darkness. 

But is not this one of the trials of our probation % 
In this mingled state we see nothing clearly, but in 
every case something is left to faith ; and thus it is we 
are to select the truths to which we cleave, and while 
error in a thousand forms is seeking to entrap us, we 
are to " prove all things," and then " hold fast to that 
which is good." Difficult, indeed, would be the task — 

efforts under the guidance of a clearer light. In the Papal schools of the 
Middle Ages we may find devotion, zeal, charity ; but we should not look 
to them for that completeness, that holy consistency of character, which 
was the ornament of earlier and purer times." — (Bowden's "Life of Greg- 
ory VII," vol. i., p. 12.) 
1 Romans i. 20. 



60 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

nay, often impossible, were we left to ourselves ; but 
there are voices coming to us from the distant past. 
They are those formularies which have grown up amid 
blood and persecution, when holy men were compelled 
to concentrate all their powers, and give up all their 
hearts and minds, to that word in whose truth alone 
they could find rest or happiness. To those, then, let 
us cling, until the time comes when all doubt is over, 
and faith gives place to certainty. As the redeemed 
enter the Paradise of God, the last shadow which dark- 
ens their spirit will fade away, and they find themselves 
in the presence of Him who is " the Father of lights." 

And then, too, the Lord Himself shall be the teacher 
of His Church, and lead His people into all truth. With 
minds no longer straitened by human infirmity, as cen- 
turies go by they will be learning more deeply the lore 
of Heaven, and be ever acquiring wider views of those 
doctrines of which the lessons of the Church on earth 
were but the rudiments and first beginnings. 



II. 

FELLOAVSHIP. 



<{ blest communion, fellowship divine ! 
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine ; 
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. 
And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, 
Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song, 
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong." 

W. W. How. 



II. 

FELLOWSHIP. 

To "continue steadfastly in the Apostles' fellow- 
ship " was a necessary consequence of remaining stead- 
fast in their doctrine. Those who revered their teach- 
ing and wished to conform to the faith they preached, 
could not abandon the Unity of the Church. St. Paul 
had indignantly asked, " Is Christ divided ? " And 
when the Apostles had gone to their rest, and the 
Church found the necessity of embodying its faith in 
Creeds, one article which it always held prominently 
forward was, u I believe in one Holy Catholic Church." 
Even heretics acknowledged this truth, and when they 
wandered from the faith, they still clung to the Apos- 
tolic ministry. The Arians attempted to form no new 
Church ; and even the schismatic Donatists and Nova- 
tians never gave up their claim to be a portion of the 
Catholic Church. 

The early Christians knew no other doctrine ; they 
recognized no other faith. Looking back to the last 
solemn petitions of their Lord, when He prayed that 
His followers might be one, as He and the Father were 
one, 1 they realized that grievous was the sin of him 
who should break this holy fellowship, and introduce 

1 John xvii. 21. 



61 TEE CEURCH OF TEE APOSTLES. 

dissensions into that Church which is to be on earth 
a type of the Church in Heaven. 

The subject, then, of this chapter will be, that fel- 
lowship with the Apostles which was the privilege 
of the early Christians, and which they have be- 
queathed to us who are now members of the Catholic 
Church. It was the privilege of all who, in every pe- 
riod of the world, remained steadfast in the Church 
which God founded. It was synonymous with mem- 
bership in the true Yisible Church. The view we shall 
attempt to give will necessarily be historical. Looking 
back through all ages of the former dispensations, we 
shall see that everywhere the plan of God was one 
which, as in the Apostolic days, recognized the Unity 
of the Church, and that every infringement of this 
Unity was the result of man's evil passions alone. 

The first Church was necessarily the Patriarchal. 
We behold its worship in the earliest sacrifice which 
was offered, when, in the morning of the world, Cain 
and Abel presented their gifts before God. It was 
seen again when Noah stood with a single family upon 
Ararat, and there, looking out over a world baptized 
by the flood, and with the bow of promise stretching 
over his head, he consecrated it anew by sacrifice to 
God. In those days there could be no separate and ap- 
pointed priesthood. The patriarch ministered in holy 
things to his own family, thus invested with the double 
title of earthly and spiritual father. 

But as the human race extended, and men " vrent 
out from the presence of the Lord," it became neces- 
sary to confine the Yisible Church within narrower lim- 
its, to preserve it from influences which led men off to 



FELLOWSHIP. 65 



idolatry. Therefore, Abraham was called to come out 
from his kindred, and in this world to be the repository 
of Divine Truth for the benefit of those who should 
come after. Then the Church of God was restricted to 
such as had gathered beneath his tent on the plains of 
Mamre ; and while the Syrian shepherds worshiped 
God in those mighty solitudes where they dwelt, they 
were often the sole possessors of His truth in the world. 

The Church then had its duty to discharge, and we 
see plainly what it was. It was to preserve unimpaired 
the doctrine of God's Unity, resisting that tendency 
which everywhere was leading men to polytheism, as 
the untutored mind craved some visible symbol of the 
Deity, and turned, therefore, most naturally to the 
Hosts of Heaven — to the sun coming forth in his glory 
and " the moon walking in brightness." This, then, 
was the charge of the Patriarchal Church, and thus it 
can be traced down the stream of history in the sacred 
records. Its unity is always clearly marked, for the in- 
spired historians confined themselves almost entirely to 
its fortunes as being alone worthy of narration, while 
occasional and incidental: only are the notices of those 
beyond its pale. 

Few and simple, therefore, were the revelations of 
that early day. To the patriarchs the past teemed not, 
as it does to us, with countless monuments of God's 
wondrous doings, which had their influence on the 
question of man's salvation. Tradition, indeed, told 
him of the blissful clays of Paradise, and of the sor- 
rowful fall which had eclipsed its glory, and made man 
a wanderer over the earth which his sins had cursed. 
To them but one single promise lightened up the dark- 



66 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

ened pathway of the human race, while it spake of a 
conflict to be waged — a victory to be gained ; and a 
distant Redeemer vaguely shadowed forth, as the one 
who was to restore to man his lost inheritance. 1 But 
with us, who read the history of those ages, there is no 
hesitation as to which were the true people of God. 
The existence of the One Church is evident. 

The time at length came when there was to be a 
plainer manifestation of the Church. The Jewish Dis- 
pensation succeeded the Patriarchal. Then the Chmch 
stood forth even more prominently before the world. 
Its members were cut off from the nations around them, 
and hedged in by countless rites, so as to create an im- 
passable barrier between them and the impure services 
of the heathen with whom they were brought in con- 
tact. The worshipers then stood upon. a higher ground 
than they did under the former system. Before their 
eyes was a long series of signal and glorious mercies, 
and prophecies without number, growing more specific 
every age, while the very land in which they lived was 
a testimony and pledge of God's favor. 

Then there was a priesthood constituted by God 
Himself, and, we are told, at the altar none had a right 
to minister but " he that was called of God, as was 
Aaron." 2 Then membership in the one Church was a 
known and acknowledged privilege, and to be cut off 
from it, to be regarded " as a heathen man," was looked 
upon with trembling, as a punishment which debarred 
the offender from all spiritual hopes in this world and 
the next. The Jew turned with horror from the schis- 
matic Samaritans, and even our Lord declared to the 

1 Gen. iii. 15. 2 Hob. v. 4. 



FELLOWSHIP. 67 



woman of that nation : " Ye worship ye know not 
what : we know what we worship : for salvation is of 
the Jews." * There was no donbt in that day with re- 
gard to the Unity of the Church. All the true wor- 
shipers were " of Israel," and " to them," the Apostle 
declares, " pertained the adoption, and the glory, and 
the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the ser- 
vice of God, and the promises." 2 

Twenty-live centuries passed away, and the Church 
assumed another form, or rather was developed at last 
into the fullness of which the former Dispensation gave 
only the promise and the germ. The Jewish polity 
had performed its office in preserving the prophecies 
of the Messiah, and by the array of types and sacrifices 
familiarizing the world with all those great principles 
which were to meet their reality on the heights of Cal- 
vary. Then came the " fullness of time," and our Lord 
sent forth His Apostles with authority to found that 
spiritual Church which was to be His last gift to men. 
And we have already remarked how earnestly He peti- 
tioned in His last prayer that its unity might be pre- 
served. Nowhere, indeed, through the whole of Script- 
ure, is there any intimation given that varying Creeds 
and differing folds were to meet the requirements of 
Him who is " not the author of confusion, but 
peace." 3 

Then the faithful had not only fellowship with God, 
but also " fellowship one with another." Whether St. 
Peter preached the Gospel to the Babylonian colony on 
the Euphrates, or St. Thomas in distant India, or St. 

1 John iv. 22. 2 Rom. ix. 4. 3 1 Cor. xiv. 33. 



68 TEE CEURGE OF TEE APOSTLES. 



Paul in the scar eel y-known Britain, everywhere they 
founded but one Church. 

" From many an ancient river, 
From many a palmy plain " — 

in strange tongues prayers went up to Jesus of Naza- 
reth, and professions of faith were made, as the Chris- 
tians gathered on their Holy Day, yet everywhere the 
doctrine was the same, and all were bound together in 
one chain of brotherhood. They were different portions 
of the same Church, like different branches of the same 
vine, all tracing upward through the same Apostolic 
Ministry. " There is one Church," says St. Cyprian, " di- 
vided by Christ throughout the whole world into many 
members, and also one Episcopate diffused through a 
harmonious multitude of many Bishops." ' The Chris- 
tian of Antioch, when he sojourned in Spain or Gaul, 
found there, too, the Altars of his Church, and united 
with a free heart in all her worship. 2 This was its out- 

1 Epistle li. 

2 We see this intercommunism everywhere through the Acts. " The 
Churches of Christ " saluted the faithful of Rome (xvi. 16). The Churches 
of Asia " saluted" that of Corinth (1 Cor. xvi. 19). " Letters of commen- 
dation " are alluded to as being common (2 Cor. iii. 1). The Epistles 
written to the Corinthians and Laodiccans are directed to be read in 
both Churches (Col. iv. 15, 16). 

At a later day, Eusebius in his " History " (iv., 23) gives many in- 
stances of this. The Church of Rome sends aid to that of Corinth. St. 
Clement, the Bishop of Rome, writes to the Corinthians to exhort them 
to unity. Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, and Dionysius, Bishop of 
Corinth, wrote many Epistles to other Churches, as noticed by Eusebius. 
When Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, came to Rome, the Bishop allowed 
him to consecrate the Eucharist in his presence, to show their union. 
And Bingham (" Orig. Eecles.," v., 1, s. 3) shows that the use of commen- 
datory letters was universal. The seventh Canon of the Council of Car- 



FELLOWSHIP. 09 



ward unity — that unity after which the heart of man 
is always now sighing, which alone presents the Church 
before the world as it should be, in all its strength, to 
prosecute its warfare against the powers of evil. 

Take any branch of the Apostolic Church, and how 
striking is the view it gives us, stretching onward from 
age to age, as it rides over every changing form of gov- 
ernment, contends through passing centuries with every 
kind of idolatry and error, and rises unharmed above 
the torrents of persecution which sweep around it ! 
As an illustration of this, look at the history of the 
Great Oriental Church. " Uninterrupted successions of 
Metropolitans and Bishops stretch themselves to Apos- 
tolic times; venerable Liturgies exhibit doctrine un- 
changed and discipline uncorrupted ; the same sacrifice 
is offered, the same hymns are chanted, by the Eastern 
Christians of to-day, as those which resounded in the 
Churches of St. Basil or St. Firmilian. In the glow 
and splendor of Byzantine glory, in the tempests of the 
Oriental Middle Ages, in the desolation and tyranny of 
the Turkish Empire, the testimony of the same immu- 
table Church remains unchanged. Extending herself 
from the Sea of Okhotsk to the palaces of Yenice, from 
the ice-fields that grind against the Solevetsky Monas- 
tery to the burning jungles of Malabar ; embracing a 
thousand languages, and nations, and tongues, but bind- 
ing them together in the golden link of the same faith ; 
offering the sacrifice in a hundred Liturgies, but offer- 
ing it to the same God ; and with the sames rites fixing 
her patriarchal thrones in the same cities, as when the 

thage, and the forty-first Canon of the Council of Laodicea, render these 
letters indispensable both for clergy and laity. 



TO THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

Disciples were called Christians first at Antioch, and 
James, the brother of the Lord, finished his course at 
Jerusalem, oppressed by the devotees of the false 
Prophet, as once by the worshipers of false gods — she 
is now, as she was from the beginning, multiplex in 
her arrangements, simple in her faith, difficult of com- 
prehension to strangers, easily intelligible to her 
sons, widely scattered in her branches, hardly beset 
by her enemies, yet still and evermore what she de- 
lights to call herself, One, Only, Holy, Catholic, and 
Apostolic. . . . 

" For eighteen hundred years this venerable Com- 
munion has fought the good fight, and borne about in her 
body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Since she armed 
Athanasius against Arius, and sent forth Cyril against 
Kestorius, unnumbered heresies have assailed her: foes 
in every shape have surrounded her ; without have 
been fightings, within fears ; her existence itself has 
oftentimes been a very agony; yet the gates of hell 
have never prevailed against her. Idolatry and Apos- 
tasy have attempted her subjugation and confessed her 
invincible ; Kings and Caliphs, Emperors and Sultans, 
have stood up against her, but the King of Kings and 
Lord of Lords has been on her side. Sapor and the 
fire-worship ers were vanquished by the victories of the 
innumerable Martyrs of Persia ; Tiridates and the 
idolaters of Armenia were overthrown by the miracles 
of St. Gregory the Illuminator ; Abreha and Atrbeha ? 
with their Ethiopic subjects, repented at the preaching 
of St. Frumentius. . . . 

" The Impostor of Mecca poured out his hordes from 
Arabia, and taught them to look for a type of the cool 



FELLOWSHIP. 71 



shades of Paradise in the shadows of the clashing cime- 
ters. Persia fell before his generals ; Abubekr and 
Omar poured their legions into Syria. Antioch, and 
Jerusalem, and Aleppo, and Alexandria, bowed them- 
selves before the accursed crescent. The Empire of the 
Csesars was vanquished, and limited, and contracted : 
the spiritual dominion of the Eastern Church stooped 
not to the victor. Many a noble victory was won for 
Christ ; many a glorious athlete was sent to martyrdom. 
The Church rode out this storm : as little did she quail 
before the successive billows of devastation that poured 
in around her. The Caliphates, Ommiad, Fatimite, and 
Ayoubite, rose and fell ; she, hated, despised, persecuted 
by all, mocked at their destruction ; the Seljukian Sul- 
tanate glared, and was extinct like a meteor ; the Mon- 
golian hordes filled Asia and half Europe with devas- 
tation and dismay ; and finally the Turks overwhelmed 
Constantinople itself, and closed the annals of the East- 
ern Empire. But the Eastern Church survived : dis- 
pirited, persecuted, humbled to the very dust, from 
generation to generation she handed clown the power 
of the keys and offered the mystic sacrifice. . . . And 
it may well be, that in the great regeneration of the 
Church, in the second and more blessed Pentecost, the 
(Ecumenical Throne of the East will bear no small 
part." 1 

Is it strange, then, that we love to linger on this 
scene ; that in a world rife with contentions, and where 
the voice of controversy ever strikes upon the ear, we 
should gladly turn to those glorious exhibitions of the 
Apostolic Church, as it won its triumphs, which, begin- 

1 Neale's " History of the Holy Eastern Church," Introduction. 



72 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

ning in the earliest times, have even now not ceased : 
showing from age to age that unquenchable life which 
is the result of its divine organization ! It mattered 
not what were the persecutions without, while within 
they were called by but one name, and answered to but 
one tribunal. Its unity gifted it with a power which 
nothing else could have done ; and even when, in after- 
centuries, differences arose between the Latin Church 
of the West and the Greek Church of the East, yet 
neither severed itself from the Apostolic Ministry, and 
their Bishops, as we have seen at Xice, sat together in 
Council. It was reserved for the last three hundred 
years to present to the world the picture of a religious 
community utterly divided, and those who should be 
members of the same household arrayed against each 
other under different names. 

Such is the view of " fellowship with the Apos- 
tles" which history gives us from the earliest times. 
We turn to the writings of Ignatius, the disciple of St. 
John, and we find that he, when speaking of the three 
orders of the Ministry in his day, could assert, " With- 
out these there is no Church." ' Then fifteen hundred 
years pass by, during which the organization of the 
Church is unaltered. Amid the commotions and changes 
of the Reformation, the learned Hooker could send 
forth the challenge to those who had renounced the 
Apostolic Ministry : " We require you to find but one 
Church upon the face of the whole earth that hath 
been ordered by your discipline, or hath not been or- 
dered by ours, that is to say, by Episcopal regiment, 
sithence the time that the blessed Apostles were here 

1 Epistle to Trallians, sec. 3. 



FELLOWSHIP. 73 



conversant." * This challenge, given in 1594, has never 
been answered. 

It was in the beginning of the sixteenth century 
that a religions convulsion, known as the Reformation, 
shook the world, and parted into many folds those w T ho 
professed and called themselves Christians. With 
many on the Continent of Europe who followed Luther 
or Calvin, the chain of the ministry which bound them 
to Apostolic times was broken, and a self-constituted 
authority took its place. Then, division followed divi- 
sion, until the ecclesiastical historian feels as if looking 
down upon a wild scene over w T hich chaos broods, as he 
endeavors in vain to record the narrative of its cease- 
less changes, unable to explain or even count the ever- 
varying fantasies. 

With our own Church it was not so. Turning 
away from those who were " emulous of change," the 
Church of England merely threw off the corruptions 
which ages had been gathering about it, and clinging 
to " the treasure of hereditary belief," she retained the 
succession of the Apostolic Ministry, and altered noth- 
ing that was fundamental. Thus she preserved her 
primitive character, and, while others wandered away 
into the endless subdivisions of Augsburg and Geneva, 
she " continued steadfastly in the Apostles' fellowship." 

This, then, is the historical view of the subject. 
We perceive how, through all the centuries which have 
passed, it was the plan of Providence to present but 
one Church before the world, and that, when this unity 
at last was broken, it was but a repetition of the sin of 
Korah in the wilderness. 3 And now, will the question 

1 Freface to " Eccles. Polity," sec. 4. 3 Numbers xvi. 

4 



74 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

be asked by any one, What is the worth of this Unity ? 
It would not be strange if it were, for there are those 
who, looking over this scene of disorder and conflict, 
can even rejoice that these things are so, as if competi- 
tion was a necessary element of the Church of Christ, 
and our Lord could not accomplish His plans for the 
renovation of the world but through the weakness and 
failings of His followers. But we will meet this argu- 
ment by referring to the Church in early ages, and 
showing its influence on the world, when it stood forth 
one single, united body, which all everywhere could 
recognize, contrasted with the evils which, in these lat- 
ter days, have gathered about us. 

While, then, there was but one Church throughout 
the world, it possessed the power of discipline. We 
know no better way to illustrate this than by a com- 
parison with the Roman Empire, which then stretched 
its sway over the whole known world. There were 
different provinces, and rulers, and languages, yet over 
all brooded one mighty power, which was felt from 
the extremity of Western Europe to the confines of In- 
dia. Whither, then, could the offender flee ? Eor a 
crime committed in any part of that vast Empire, the 
world itself furnished no refuge. In Gaul, in Egypt, 
or in Persia, the grasp of the law was upon him, and 
the might of Roman justice seemed to possess ubiquity. 
Should he flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, even 
there its hand would seize him and its right hand hold 
him. Wherever he went she claimed him as her citi- 
zen, and he was within the reach of her power. He 
could not, as in this day, flee from the land in which 
his crime was committed, and then feel that he could 



FELLOWSHIP. Y5 



laugh at the arm of justice, for it would be paralyzed 
were it to stretch beyond the frontier. 

And thus it was, in some degree, in the Church. 
For the heretic or the offender there was no spiritual 
home in Christendom. When, for instance, excommu- 
nicated from the Church of Antioch or Damascus, he 
could not find admission even into those of Western 
Europe, where men spoke a different tongue, for with- 
out the commendatory letters of his Bishop he could 
gain no entrance into any other fold. With what pow- 
ers, then, were the censures of the Church armed, 
when he who was subjected to them was thrown at once 
beyond the pale of Christendom, and driven, as it were, 
into heathenism ! For him there was no longer a Gos- 
pel or an altar. There were no promises to cheer him 
during life, no Holy Offices to wait upon his last mo- 
ments, no consecrated burial to commit his remains to 
the dust. His only choice was between this One Church 
which stood before him in all her grandeur, and the 
total absence of every religious privilege. St. Cyprian, 
in his day, wrote, not as a matter of controversy, but as 
an acknowledged truth, "Whoever he may be, and 
whatever he may be, he who is not in the Church of 
Christ is not a Christian." 1 And again, " If any one 
could escape who was outside the Ark of Noah, then 
he also may escape who is outside of the Church." 2 

A striking instance of this discipline is related by 
the historian Gibbon. Under the reign of the younger 
Theodosius, Synesius filled the Episcopal seat of Ptole- 
mais, near the ruins of the ancient Cyrene. The civil 
ruler was Andronicus, " the monster of Libya, who 

1 Epist. li. 2 Cyprian, on " Unity of the Church." 



76 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

abused the authority of a venal office, invented new 
modes of rapine and torture, and aggravated the guilt 
of oppression by that of sacrilege. After a fruitless 
attempt to reclaim the haughty magistrate by mild and 
religious admonition, Synesius proceeds to inflict the 
last sentence of ecclesiastical justice, which devotes 
Andronicus, with his associates and their families, to 
the abhorrence of earth and heaven. The impenitent 
sinners are deprived of the name and privileges of 
Christians, of the participation of the sacraments, and 
of the hope of Paradise. The Bishop exhorts the 
clergy, the magistrates, and the people, to renounce 
all society with the enemies of Christ, to exclude them 
from their houses and tables, and to refuse them the 
common offices of life and the decent rites of burial. 
The Church of Ptolemais, obscure and contemptible as 
she may appear, addresses this declaration to all her 
sister Churches of the world ; and the profane who re- 
ject her decrees will be involved in the guilt and pun- 
ishment of Andronicus and his impious followers." l 

And this interdict was not in vain. The Christian 
Church everywhere received it, and Andronicus was 
obliged in penitence to implore the mercy of the Church 
and submit to her authority. 

It is to this, then, we must ascribe the Church's power 
of discipline, when years of penitence and self-denial were 
willingly endured ,at her command, and the Bishop of 
Milan could keep even the Emperor Theodosius a sup- 
pliant for admission at the Church's door, and not receive 
him till a long probation had testified to his repentance. 3 

1 Gibbon's " History," chap. xx. 

- Theodoret's "EccL Hist," lib. v., chap. 18. 



FELLOWSHIP. 77 



But how. could this be done now, when the Church 
is surrounded by jealous and discordant communities, 
each ready to welcome a proselyte, while he himself, 
as he takes refuge in their fold, feels that he still bears 
the name, of Christian, and therefore calms his fears, 
and derides the censures which should have humbled 
him into penitence? The discipline of the Church, 
therefore, is now confined to those who voluntarily re- 
main within her fold. 

Again, another consideration was, the certainty of 
the faith. In those ancient days of unity, as the Chris- 
tian set out in life, he had no doubts as to the faith he 
should adopt. On the one side was, the world of hea- 
thenism—on the other, Christianity was represented by 
the One Church ever before him, sanctioned by apos- 
tles, and martyrs, and confessors, and he had only to 
remain subject to her teaching. The past arrayed be- 
fore him a mighty company of the holy dead who had 
held these doctrines ; their graves were about him, and 
the fragrance of their holiness still lingered in the 
Church where they had worshiped. He realized, there- 
fore, that he had " come to the spirits of just men made 
perfect," and he would cleave to the faith which upheld 
them in their mortal day. He not only felt it would 
be wronging their sacred memory to abandon the in- 
heritance they had bequeathed to him, but he knew 
that if he went out from the Church he must become 
an alien and a stranger. Whither could he go, for she 
only had the words of eternal life ? In the bosom of 
the Church alone could he realize the calm feeling of 
home, for she only bore the Christian name. There 
was nothing, therefore, to distract the mind. The great 



78 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

principles of the faith were commended to him by the 
example of the holy saints who had gone, and of the 
mighty multitude of the living who were gathered into 
the fold. ~No discordant voices perplexed him ; no 
siren tones lured him into error ; but he passed along 
through life with the path plainly marked before him. 
His days glided quietly and soberly on in the infolding 
arms of his spiritual mother, till at last he went to 
dwell with his Lord in the perfect bliss of the Church 
triumphant. 

And such, too, were his feelings wherever he wan- 
dered over the earth. Touching, indeed, was the illus- 
tration given of this by a Venetian traveler in the thir- 
teenth century, when in one of the cities of distant 
England he met a funeral train: " There was nothing 
new or strange, or singular, about the burial procession, 
particularly calculated to excite the attention of Marco 
Polo. The De Profimdis of the stoled priest spake 
the universal language adopted by the most sublime of 
human compositions, the Liturgy of Western Christen- 
dom. Yet, though no objects appeared which could 
awaken any lively curiosity in the traveler, there was 
much in their familiarity to excite the sympathy of a 
wanderer in a foreign land. With an altered tone he 
said to the friar: ' Saddened is the spirit of the pilgrim, 
by the dying twilight and the plaining Yesper-bell. 
But he who braves every danger for himself may feel 
his heart sink within him when the pageant of tri- 
umphant death brings to his mind the thought that 
those for whom, as he weened, he parted for a little 
time only, may have been already borne to the sep- 
ulchre. Yet there is also a great and enduring comfort 



FELLOWSHIP. 79 



to the traveler in Christendom. However uncouth 
may be the speech of the races among whom the pil- 
grim sojourns, however diversified may be the customs 
of the regions which he visits, let him enter the portal 
of the Church, or hear, as I do now, the voice of the 
minister of the Gospel, and he is present with his own, 
though Alps and oceans may sever them asunder. There 
is one spot where the pilgrim always finds his home. 
We are all one people when we come before the Altar 
of the Lord.' " x 

In a later age, indeed, until this Unity was broken, 
the Eeligious Houses which were scattered through 
Europe kept alive this feeling of fellowship in the 
mind of the wanderer from distant lands. " The trav- 
eler rose with the Religions men, beneath whose roof 
he had found shelter for the night; with them he 
sought, first of all, the House, oftentimes the Altar of 
God, and joined in the Matin Service of the Western 
Church./ He went forward on his road with prayer and 
benediction. Prosperum itur was the kindly monks' 
farewell. And from field, and brook, and bush, the 
salutation still for miles came forth, haunting his ear, 
Procedas in pace, in nomine Domini! A cloud of 
good wishes accompanied and guarded him from mon- 
astery to monastery, while the Courts of Bishops and 
the cloisters of learned men were opened to him, by 
the commendatory letters of his native prelates. . . . 
There were a hundred little needs, interesting the af- 
fections and laying hold on the imagination, which we 
remember, and with fond envy many times recapitulate, 
satisfied to the full for those who traveled in Christen- 

1 Sir Francis Palgrave's " Merchant and Friar," p. 138. 



80 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

dom when at unity with itself, but now utterly unsatis- 
fied for modern wanderers, amid the jealous and dis- 
jointed Churches. The traveler of those times was sure 
of a home for Easter or Whitsuntide ; the continual 
haunting of sacred places was, as it were, a safeguard 
against the fresh shapes and daily-transformed tempta- 
tions of sin, to which a traveler is exposed ; he had holy 
Houses everywhere, as refuges in times of weariness or 
pestilence, and a certainty, in case death should inter- 
cept him, of a consecrated resting-place among the Chris- 
tian dead, when he had passed through the narrow gate, 
aided by the offices and absolutions of the Church." ' 

But how different is now the picture since this 
Unity has been swept away ! How sad the contrast 
given by a living poet, as he portrays the feelings of 
an English Churchman visiting Spain ! — 

" Before the shrine of some blest saint, 

While loud the organ peals, 
In unsuspecting faith and love 

Each Spanish maiden kneels. 
Three Sundays now have passed since we 

On Spanish land first trod ; 
And never have 1 dared to seek 

The presence of my God. 
My fainting soul in solitude 

Seeks for relief in vain : 
Blue hills, and glorious bright green tiling;., 

Do but augment my pain. 
I seem, 'mid sighs and sounds of prayer, 

That o'er these mountains swell, 
To be — it is a fearful thought — 

An outward infidel." - 

1 Fabev's "Foreign Churches and Peoples," p. 13. 

2 Lord John Manners^ " Outcast." 



FELLOWSHIP. 81 



The traveler finds, too, that the general name of 
Christian is not sufficient to win the confidence of those 
among whom he sojourns, and the inquirer is forced to 
listen to a hundred warring Creeds which claim his at- 
tention, until he asks in despair : " What is truth % " 
He knows not which way to turn or on what to rest. 
Thousands of dissenting voices are around him, audi 
" after the way which they call heresy," he is obliged 
to "worship the God of his fathers." Thus, life is 
often passed in a state of uncertainty as to whether or 
not he has embraced the right, or, what is worse, his 
judgment becomes warped, and he is enlisted in a war- 
fare against the truth, because he believes it to be false- 
hood. Deep and lasting is the perversion to his mind 
from thus imbibing delusion and error ; and at last, per- 
haps, he is led into an involuntary apostasy, by which 
he inflicts a grave injury upon his moral being. Of 
how many is this the unfortunate history ! How sad 
the contrast to those earlier days, when the faithful 
everywhere realized that God had " knit together His 
elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical 
body of His Son Christ our Lord ! " 

We will look at one more argument in behalf of 
this Unity — the impression the Church was thus enabled 
to malce upon the world. Why is it that the Church, 
in former ages, did so much more to Christianize the 
world than it is now doing ? It is because then it pre- 
sented itself before men as one body, and therefore 
there was unity of action. JSTow, its efforts are desul- 
tory and feeble, when put forth by disjointed and rival 
communities. Then, there was but one Spirit animat- 
ing all. Wherever there was an individual who bore 



82 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

the Christian name, lie felt he was no solitary comba- 
tant. He was acting in concert with his brethren 
through the wide world, and the Christians on the 
Western shore of Europe and on the distant coast of 
India rejoiced together in every advantage gained by 
the Cross. 

The very spectacle they presented to the heathen 
was an imposing one. They saw the Christian Church 
gathered as one body out of all nations, bound together 
by one spirit, and living in one enduring fellowship. 
Earthly kingdoms were ever at war, and committed in 
deadly strife with each other. One was crushed by the 
weight of a mightier kingdom, and others rent asunder 
by internal convulsions. But the Church gave to the 
world the first display of permanence and unity. Man- 
kind stood in need of some common basis, and to fur- 
nish this was one Mission of the Church. It presented 
before them the one choice between Christianity and 
Paganism. It stood alone amid the countless forms of 
Idolatry and Schools of Philosophy — " a great visible 
phenomenon, as one vast, overspreading shadow, cast 
from the one invisible Mercy-seat, in the shelter of 
which alone there was salvation for mankind." ' They 
had to receive it or reject it as a whole, to be Christians, 
or have no part or lot in this redemption. If they 
turned away from it, the solemn explanation given was, 
"If our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost." 
So it was the Chinch passed down the stream of time 
in all the grandeur of its Unity, claiming the homage 
of the world, enshrining that One "Name under heaven 
given among men whereby they must be saved/' 
1 Manning on "The Unity of the Church." 



FELLOWSHIP. 83 



We might ask, By whom were the mightiest tri- 
umphs of the faith won ? Not by these discordant and 
changing sects, but by the Apostolic Church, which, 
strong in its divine Unity, went forth to challenge the 
control of man's spiritual interests. Let ns turn, then, 
for an illustration, to the cradle of our faith, and see 
how even from the earliest times to the present day, 
the Church in that region — that Great Oriental Church, 
so little understood by us — has gone on, fighting hand- 
to-hand with every opponent, saying to the East, Give 
up ! and to the West, Keep not back ! 

" Eastward, from the Great School of Edessa, the 
envoys of Christianity went forth. They pitched their 
tents in the camps of the wandering Tartar ; the Lama 
of Thibet trembled at their words ; they stood in the 
rice-fields of the Punjaub, and taught the fishermen by 
the sea of Aral ; they struggled through the vast des- 
erts of Mongolia ; the memorable inscription of Siganf u 
attests their victories in China ; in India the Zamorin 
himself respected their spiritual and courted their tem- 
poral authority. From the Black Sea to the Caspian, 
the Monks of Etchmiadzine girded themselves for this 
holy warfare ; they braved alike the Pagan and the 
Fire-worshiper, the burning suns of Tiflis, and the 
feverish swamps of Imeritia ; they subjugated the bor- 
der-lands of Europe and Asia, and planted a colony half- 
way up the Great Ararat. 

" Southward, Alexandria sent forth another army 
of Missionaries. Steering through the trackless deserts 
by sun and stars, they preached the Gospel as far as 
the fountains of the Nile, and planted flourishing 
Churches in Nubia and Abyssinia. Solitary Monks 



8i THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

ventured farther into the kingdom of Satan ; through 
the savage Gallas they passed to Melinda or Zanguebar ; 
others, committing themselves to the merchant-vessels, 
preached the way of salvation to Cape Guardafui, So- 
cotra, and distant Ceylon. Here the two great armies 
of Christian warriors met, having embraced a quarter 
of the then known world in their holy circle. 

" Northward, latest but most victoriously, Constan- 
tinople sent out her envoys; Constantine convinced 
Vladimir by the Icon of the last judgment of the ' good 
to those at the right hand, the woe to those at the 
left ; ' the idol Peroun was carried by the Dnieper to 
the sea ; farther and farther the pioneers of the truth 
pushed their way ; Moscow, and KiefT, and Vladimir, 
owned their Metropolitans ; tribes unknown to the 
ancients received spiritual illumination. Undeterred 
by Sarmatian forest or CEsticean swamp, the soldiers of 
the Cross went on conquering and to conquer, till they 
stood on the barbarous shores of the ' sluswish sea.' 
Thence their holy chivalry bore them Eastward ; over- 
leaping the Ural Mountains, they forced their way into 
Siberia ; slowly and painfully they advanced toward the 
rising sun, preaching the glad tidings of the Son of 
Righteousness ; at Irkutsk, and Sitka, and Tomsk, 
after centuries of warfare, they have placed a Vicar of 
Christ for the feeding of His Hock ; and thus, on the 
borders of Chinese Tartary, they hailed the disciples of 
the early teachers that went forth from Edessa. And, 
even now, missionary zeal has not abated. On the un- 
known shores of the Aleutian Islands, a band of faith- 
ful priests have sealed with their labors the faith they 



FELLOWSHIP. 85 



taught, and thus have raised the standard of the East- 
ern Church in the Western "World." ' 

How noble this picture, as we see the serried and 
unbroken ranks of the Apostolic Church going on its 
course of triumph ! But, as a contrast, let us look at a 
single scene which is often witnessed. The Missionary 
of the Cross goes to a heathen land, and calls the dwell- 
ers there to repentance. But he finds that others also 
of a different name are preaching there a different Gos- 
pel, and the unlettered savage knows not whom to be- 
lieve. His efforts, therefore, are thwarted by one who 
is a disciple of the same Master with himself. It was, 
therefore, the natural answer of an Indian chief, who 
had listened to the claims of these conflicting Creeds, 
" First settle among yourselves what is right, and then 
I will determine whether to receive your religion." 
The energies of the Christian world are, therefore, di- 
vided in fruitless efforts, or, what is worse, their weap- 
ons are turned against each other, and thus " the Prince 
of this World " still triumphs and rejoices over a divided 
and powerless Church. 

But does it seem to any of our readers that we have 
made of too much importance the subject of Church 
Unity ? So thought not the early Christians ; and 
strange, therefore, in the ears of a modern Churchman 
would sound the advice which St. Augustine gave the 
teacher of his day to guide him in instructing those 
ignorant of Christian doctrine. " If," he says, " the 
Catechumen be slow of understanding, and have neither 
hearing nor heart for the sweetness of truth, he must 
be borne with tenderly, and, after a short and cursory 

1 Neale's " History of the Holy Eastern Church," Introduction, 3, 4. 



86 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

statement of other points, those things which are chiefly 
necessary are to be inculcated with much awe — such as 
the Unity of the Catholic Church, the nature of tempta- 
tion, and of the Christian life, by reason of the judg- 
ment to come." * Thus it is that this Early Father 
treats the Unity of the Church as one of the first princi- 
ples of faith, and, if it sounds strange to us, it is because 
in our habits of thought we have wandered far from the 
tone of feeling and belief which prevailed in primitive 
times. 

And St. Cyprian, in his Epistle to Cornelius, the 
Bishop of Rome, says : " For this, my brother, we espe- 
cially both labor after, and ought to labor after, to be 
careful to maintain, as much as we can, the Unity de- 
livered by the Lord, and through His Apostles to us, 
their successors, and, as far as in us lies, to gather into 
the Church the dispersed and wandering sheep which 
the willful faction and heretical temptation of some is 
separating from their Mother." 2 

But still it is this Unity which links together in 
holy fellowship those who are separated by far-distant 
ages. The living have an interest in the past as fully 
as in the present. The long record of departed saints 
is the roll of the treasures of the Church, and it is pre- 
served to animate the courage of those who after them 
shall be called to " fight the good. fight." 

In that familiar story of the Progress of the Pilgrim 
to the Celestial City, he tarried for a night by the way- 
side at " the Palace of which the name was Beautiful. " 
When morning came, they told him " he should not 
depart till they had shown him the rarities of that place. 

1 St. Augustine, " Do Catering. Rudibus," cap. xiii. e Epis. xli. 



FELLOWSHIP. 87 



And first they led him into the study, where they 
showed him records of the greatest antiquity ; in which 
they showed him the pedigree of the Lord of the Hill, 
that He was the Son of the Ancient of days. Here 
also were more fully recorded the acts that He had 
done, and the names of many hundreds that He had 
taken into His service, and how He had placed them in 
such habitations that could neither by length of days 
nor decays of nature be dissolved. Then they read to 
him some of the worthy acts that some of His servants 
had done ; as how they had subdued kingdoms, wrought 
righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of 
lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of 
the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed 
valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the 
aliens." 

Thus he saw how " God, at sundry times and in 
divers manners, spake in times past to our fathers, 1 ' and, 
as a member of " the goodly fellowship " of those for 
whom all these marvels were shown, the Pilgrim was 
armed with courage to sustain him when he passed 
through the Yalley of Humiliation. 

We learn from the memoirs of the sainted Henry 
Martyn, that, on his voyage to his missionary field in 
India, when everything which surrounded him was un- 
congenial, and with no living voice to speak words of 
comfort or encouragement, he sustained his sinking 
spirit by reading the records which Milner, in his 
Church History, has given of those ancient saints, " of 
whom the world was not worthy." He writes in his 
Diary : " I love to converse, as it were, with those holy 
Bishops and Martyrs, with whom I hope, through grace, 



88 THE CHURCH OF TEE APOSTLES. 

to spend a happy Eternity. The example of the Chris- 
tian Saints in the Early Ages has been a source of sweet 
reflection to me. The holy love and devout meditations 
of Augustine and Ambrose I delight to think of. Ko 
uninspired sentence ever affected me so much as that of 
the historian, that to believe, to suffer, and to love, was 
the primitive taste." 1 

To us, then, this subject bears the lesson that, while 
rejoicing in the privilege of being members of this fold, 
we should seek to imbibe more of its spirit, and, amid 
the distractions of the world without, cleave to the 
Church which possesses fellowship with the Apostles, 
lifting up our hearts and voices to God, that peace may 
once more return to His chosen flock, and the time 
come when brethren shall no more " fall out by the 
way." There only can the mind have rest amid the 
endless tossings of an unquiet generation. There only 
" in quietness and confidence can be our strength." In 
her green pastures and by her still waters we shall not 
need to hew out cisterns for ourselves. 2 And even 
when the end of our mortal pilgrimage comes, we shall 
not leave the Church. 

" There is no death ; what seems so is transition ; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is bnt a suburb of the life Elysian, 
Whose portal we call Death." 3 

The souls of which the Apostle speaks 4 as being 
" under the altar " are as earnest now for the welfare of 
the Church as when in life they took part in the war- 

1 "Memoirs of Henry Martyu," p. 127. 

2 Jer. ii. 13. 3 Longfellow. 4 Rev. vi. 0. 



FELLOWSHIP. 89 



fare. More deeply than ever do they feel their union 
with it as they look forward to the ages that are com- 
ing, and anticipate its future glory. 

And thus at last the Judgment comes, and the Ce- 
lestial City opens its golden gates and the righteous 
meet in one holy fellowship, whose Unity shall never be 
broken — "the general assembly and Church of the 
First-born, whose names are written in Heaven." 



III. 



EUCHARIST. 



Sit down and take thy fill of joy — 
At God's right hand a bidden guest ; 

Drink of the cup that cannot cloy — 
Eat of the bread that cannot waste." 

Christian Year. 



III. 

EUCHAKIST. 

" Akd they continued steadfastly in the breaking of 
bread." As we read these words of the Evangelist, our 
thoughts involuntarily turn back to the institution of 
this rite — to the last sad night when our Lord was be- 
trayed. In that " upper room " at Jerusalem was gath- 
ered a little group, to partake once more of the Passover 
with their Lord. Within the walls of the Holy City 
were almost countless thousands who had come up to 
that Festival, and now in gladness were partaking of 
the Feast which recalled their deliverance from the iron 
bondage of Egypt. Yet with the little band of the 
Disciples it was not so. A shadow seemed to rest upon 
them. Sorrow had filled their hearts, for their Lord 
declared He was about to leave them, and what could 
the scattered sheep do when the Shepherd was taken 
from them ? 

Perhaps the one who apparently showed least emo- 
tion was our Lord Himself. To Him there was no un- 
certainty in the future. He knew perfectly what the 
coming hours were to bring forth. Looking down the 
vista opening before Him, He saw it terminated by the 
Cross, and He knew it was not " possible that this cup 
could pass from Him." He spake, therefore, to His 



94 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

followers of His approaching fate with a calm and un- 
alterable compos ire, which, must have impressed then- 
hearts with the deepest melancholy. Yet He wonld 
not leave them without some memorial of His love, and 
what more appropriate than symbols which should recall 
to their minds those terrible sufferings which, though 
they knew it not, were now close at hand ? He takes, 
therefore, the bread before Him and breaks it, as sig- 
nificant of the breaking of His body, and pours out the 
wine, to show the shedding of His Wood ; and as He 
thus institutes that significant rite — the most hallowed 
and solemn in the Christian Church — His command is, 
" This do in remembrance of me." 

The Festival closed, and when they had sung the 
Illllel — the Psalm always used on this occasion — the 
Master went forth to that death which was to be the 
pledge of the world's redemption. Yet His parting 
words had been too deeply impressed upon the hearts 
of His followers to be ever forgotten. As soon, then, 
as the infant Church had been organized — as soon as 
they could gather once more into one assembly — when 
they offered prayers to their newly-risen Lord, they 
never failed, at the same time, to commemorate His 
death in this solemn rite. They met — we are always 
told — " for prayer and the breaking of bread." It is 
thus that this rite is everywhere mentioned in the Acts 
of the Apostles as if it invariably constituted a part of 
their Service. 1 Except, however, in one single instance, 
it is only referred to by allusion in the Scriptures. To 
the Corinthians the Apostle gives an elaborate discus- 
sion of this subject. 3 They had perverted it into a com- 

1 Acts ii. 42, 40 ; xx. 7. - 1 Cor. xi. 



EUCHARIST. 95 



mon feast, and St. Paul, therefore, reproves them, and 
states its sacred origin and import, and bids them keep 
it as a holy Festival to the Lord. 

Passing, then, from the Sacred Volume, we will 
turn to the records of Ecclesiastical writers in the next 
age, that we may see the manner in which they re- 
garded it. 

We begin with an account by Justin Martyr, in the 
second century, of the form in which this rite was then 
administered, and we quote his own words, that our 
readers may hear this early Christian, who afterward 
poured out his blood in martyrdom rather than sacrifice 
to idols, describe for himself the scene he so often wit- 
nessed : 

"After baptism," he says, "we lead him who hath 
expressed his conviction and professed the faith, to the 
brethren, where they are gathered together, to make 
common prayers with great earnestness, both for them- 
selves and for him who is now illuminated, and for all 
others in all places, that having learned the truth, we 
may be deemed worthy to be found men of godly con- 
versation in our lives, and to keep the commandments, 
that so we may attain to eternal salvation. When we 
have finished our prayers we salute one another with a 
kiss, after which there is brought to the brother who 
presides bread and a cup of wine mixed with water, 
and he, having received them, gives praise and glory to 
the Father of all things, through the name of the Son 
and of the Holy Spirit, and gives thanks in many words 
for that God hath vouchsafed to them these things ; and 
when he hath finished his praises and thanksgivings, 
all the people who are present express their assent, 



96 TEE GEURGE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

saying Amen, which means in the Hebrew tongue, ' So 
be it.' 

" He wdio presides having given thanks, and the 
people having expressed their assent, those whom we 
call * deacons ' give to each of those who are present a 
portion of the bread which hath been blessed, and of 
the wine mixed with water, and carry some away for 
those who are absent ; and this food is called by us the 
Eucharist (thanksgiving), of which no one may partake 
unless he believes that what we teach is true, and is 
washed in the Laver, which is appointed for the forgive- 
ness of sins and unto regeneration, and lives in such a 
manner as Christ commanded. 

" For we receive not these elements as common 
bread or common drink. . . . These solemnities being 
finished, we afterward continually remind one another 
of them, and such of us as have possessions assist all 
those who are in want ; and we all associate one with 
another, and amid all our sufferings we bless the Creator 
of all things, through His Son Jesus Christ and through 
the Holy Spirit. 

" And on the day which is called Sunday there is 
an assembly in one place of all who dwell either in 
towns or in the country, and the lives of the Apostles 
or the writings of the Prophets are read, as long as the 
time permits ; then, when the reader hath ceased, the 
head of the congregation delivers a discourse, in which 
he reminds and exhorts them to the imitation of all 
these good things. We then all stand up together and 
offer up prayers ; then, as we have already said, when 
we cease from prayer bread is brought, and wine and 
water, and our head, in like manner, offers up prayers 



EUCHARIST. 97 



and praises with all the earnestness in his power ; and 
the people express their assent by saying ' Amen.' The 
consecrated elements are then distributed and received 
by every one, and a portion is sent by the deacons to 
those who are absent. 

" Each of these also who have abundance, and are 
willing, according to his choice, gives what he thinks 
fit ; and what is collected is deposited with him who 
presides, who succors the fatherless and the widows, 
and those who are in need from sickness or any other 
cause ; those also who are in bonds, and the strangers 
who are sojourning among ns, and, in a word, takes 
care of all who are in want. 

" We all of us assemble together on Sunday, because 
it is the first day in which God changed darkness and 
matter and made the world. On the same day also 
Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead." * 

It will be noticed that this explanation of some of 
the rites of the faith being written for heathen readers, 
Justin Martyr seems studiously -to have avoided ecclesi- 
astical words and titles, which he might have used if 
writing to his own brethren, by whom they would be 
understood. We learn, however, from the passage we 
have quoted, what was the nature of the Service by 
which in that day this rite was celebrated. 

We can imagine the scene, when the faithful in the 
midst of trials and persecutions had gathered in their 
assembly, thus in secrecy to eat the bread of life and to 
mingle the water of life with bitter, tears. They had 
solved the enigma of the grave, and discovered that 
immortality for which the soul is ever yearning. And 

Austin, " Apol.," 2. 



98 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

now they were sacrificing everything in this world for 
the sake of that world of which they had so lately 
heard. As pilgrims they were ready to depart to the 
farthest confines of the earth, if new realms might be 
won to their Lord. The fire and the sword were week- 
ly thinning their ranks, and the survivors were in jeop- 
ardy every hour, realizing that they were " baptized for 
the dead," and not knowing when they should be called 
to seal their profession with their blood. To them, 
then, each recurrence of this rite must have been in- 
vested with a solemnity which they can scarcely realize, 
whose lot is to dwell in peace by the still waters and 
in the green pastures. 

And now, let us look at the frequency with which 
the Holy Communion was then received. "We have 
seen, from the allusions in the Acts of the Apostles, 
and from the account by Justin Martyr, that it was, in 
that day, always a part of public worship ; and so it 
continued to be after the Apostles' times. Ignatius, 
the disciple of St. John, exhorts the Ephesians to be 
" diligent in assembling frequently to celebrate the 
Eucharist 1 and glorify God. Eor when ye often meet 
together, ye dissolve the power of Satan, and the har- 
mony of your faith destroys the destruction which he 
meditates against you." 2 

In the same century Pliny, the Proconsul of Bithyn- 
ia, who was contemporary with Ignatius, on the confes- 
sion of some Christians whom he examined, writes 
home to Rome, that " they were accustomed to meet 
before it was light, by reason of the persecutions, and 

1 as ivxo-p^icnav. 

2 Ignatius, "Epis. to Ephesians," 13 (Bingham, vi., 900). 



EUCHARIST. 99 



there they sang hymns to Christ their God, and bound 
themselves by a sacrament against the commission of 
every kind of wickedness." ? 

And one of the Apostolical Canons prescribes, " If 
any of the faithful come to Church to hear the Script- 
ures read, and stay not to join in the prayers and re- 
ceive the Communion, let them be excommunicated as 
the authors of disorder in the Church." And the next 
Canon repeats the same with reference particularly to 
the clergy : "If any Bishop, Presbyter, or Deacon, or 
any other of the clergy, does not communicate when 
the Oblation is offered, let him show cause why he does 
not, that if it be a reasonable cause he may be excused ; 
but if he show no cause, let him be excommunicated, 
as giving scandal to the people and raising suspicion 
against him that offers." s 

The Early Fathers, indeed, speak everywhere of the 
Communion being received on each Lord's-day, as a 
custom which was universal. So much was this the 
case, we learn from St. Chrysostom, that Sunday was 
anciently called " the Day of Bread " {Dies Panis), be- 
cause the breaking of bread was so invariably the cus- 
tom of Christians on that day. 3 

But it was not on the first day of the week only 
that this rite was administered. Those were days when 
religion was not confined to Sundays and Churches, but 
went with them .through the week, influencing men 
everywhere and at all times. Tertullian says that in 
his time they not only received the Eucharist on Sun- 
days in their morning assemblies before clay, but also 

1 Pliny, lib. x., Epis. 97. 2 " Can. Apost.," 8 and 9. 

3 Chrysostom, Horn. 5, "De Resur." 



100 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

at other times, on other days, particularly on the anni- 
versary festivals of the martyrs, and the fifty days be- 
tween Easter and Pentecost, which were bnt one con- 
tinned festival, bnt also on the Wednesdays and Fridays 
in every week throughout the year. 1 

He says expressly of those two days, that they were 
always observed by receiving the Eucharist ; for, when 
some scrupled to receive it on those days, because they 
were fast-days, and they would thus break their fast, 
he takes away this objection by telling them that their 
receiving the Eucharist, so far from breaking their fast, 
would the more recommend them to God, and by doing 
this they would perfectly perform both duties 'together. 2 

St. Basil agrees with Tertullian in making these 
days not only fast-days, but days of Communion ; and 
in reckoning four days of the week in which they re- 
ceived the Communion, he counts Wednesdays and Fri- 
days, Saturdays and Sundays. 3 

In some places, we are informed, they received the 
Communion every day. " Thus," St. Augustine says, 
" the Sacrament of His Body, the Church, and its 
unity, is in some places prepared and taken every day 
at the Lord's table.'' 4 In the Church of Carthage this 
seems to have been the case at a very early clay : there- 
fore, St. Cyprian tells us, " He gives this as one sense 
of that petition in our Lord's Prayer, ' Give us this day 
our daily bread,' as if it might be understood in the 
spiritual sense, as well as in the natural, as a petition 
to be daily fed with the ilesh of Christ in the Eucha- 
rist, which was the bread of life." b 

1 Tertullian, "De Coron. Mil.," chap. 3. a Bingham, vi.. 

3 Basil, Epis. 219. 4 Bingham, vi., 010. 5 Cyprian, Epis. xxxvi. 



EUCHARIST. 101 



We do not believe, indeed, that this was the general 
custom of the Church. When this rite was daily ad- 
ministered, it seems to have been in times of persecu- 
tion, when they were in constant danger of martyrdom. 
Thus, in another passage, St. Cyprian exhorts " the mar- 
tyrs to prepare themselves for the fight of persecution, 
considering that they therefore drink the cup of Christ's 
blood every day, that they may be able to shed their 
blood for Christ." And a little after he says, " There- 
fore, let that hand which has received the body of the 
Lord embrace the Lord Himself, being afterward to re- 
ceive the reward of an eternal crown from the Lord in 
Heaven." And in another place he adds, that "the 
priests who celebrated the daily sacrifices of God, did 
also prepare the martyrs to offer themselves as victims 
and oblations nnto God." 

These last passages may give an explanation of the 
frequent Communion customary at some times. We can- 
not, however, in any way enter into the feelings of those 
who were then called to wage the Christian warfare ; 
but in that age of martyrdom they felt that they were 
ever standing on the brink of the Infinite, and the 
morning snn which rose so fair to their view might 
cast its declining beams upon their ashes, as the wind 
wafted them from the stake. The hour of death ap- 
peared not to them, as it is too often regarded by us, as 
seen through the vista of many coming years. It might 
be just at hand, and therefore they endeavored each 
day to be cleansed from their sins, and preparation 
made for their solemn change ; therefore, St. Ambrose 
says, " I ought always to receive that which is shed for 
the remission of sins, that my sins may always be for- 



102 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

given me : I that am always sinning ought always to 
have my medicine at hand, as he that has a wound 
seeks without delay for a cnre." ' 

There was one custom in that early day which 
showed in a most striking manner the reverence of the 
Church for that solemn mystery ; it was the practice of 
excluding, even from a sight of its administration, those 
who were catechumens and not yet prepared to receive 
it, or those who were unworthy to do so. "When they 
were ready to begin this portion of the Service, the 
deacon made solemn proclamation: "Ye that cannot 
communicate, depart. Let no catechumen he present, 
no hearer, no infidel, no heretical person." 3 And 
among the homilies of St. Chrysostom, in one imputed 
to SeverianuSj Bishop of Gabala, is a passage which 
shows the part of the Service in which this was done : 
" Ye have seen the deacons traversing the Church and 
crying, ' Let no catechumen be present ; none of those 
who may not see the Heavenly Blood shed for remis- 
sion of sins.' Ye remember after this how the angels 
from Heaven sing the hymns and praises, saying, ' Holy 
is the Father, holy is the Son, holy is the Holy Ghost.' " 3 
From which it is evident that it was before the Trisa- 
(/ion, " Therefore with angels and archangels," etc., and 
preparatory to the Oblation. 

AVe can imagine that this exclusion must have 
heightened the reverence of those who were thus de- 
barred. With what veneration must they have thought 
of those sacred emblems upon which they were not 
esteemed worthy to look ! It was appealing to a known 

1 Ambrose, " De Sacra™.," lib. iv., chap. 6. 

2 Bingham, lib. xv., chap. 3. 3 Chrysostom, lib. vi., Ilom. 37. 



EUCHARIST. 103 



principle of the human mind, which forces it to invest 
with a higher regard anything which is enveloped in 
mystery. And St. Augustine tells us that this was 
done " to inflame their zeal, and make them more ear- 
nest and solicitous in hastening to partake of them." It 
rendered them diligent in their preparation for that 
hour when they too should be admitted with the faith- 
ful to their Master's feast. They realized that until 
then they were only " Proselytes of the Gate," dwell- 
ing in the outer courts of the sanctuary, and their de- 
sire was kindled to hear the voice which bade them 
" Come up hither ! " and enabled them to approach the 
Altar itself. 

But what a solemnity must have been impressed 
upon an assembly of the early Christians when they 
had gathered for this rite ! The world, with its carp- 
ing doubts and questionings, was excluded. JSTo care- 
less and irreverent spectator looked upon the sacred 
mysteries, but the faithful and the believing alone, 
with one heart and one voice, knelt around the Altar. 
Their very nearness to the time of the solemn sacrifice 
which they commemorated added to its impressiveness. 
They were not separated from their Lord by long in- 
tervening centuries, and there still lingered in the 
Church traditions of what He had said and done, and 
what those had reported who had seen Him in the 
flesh ; * and these they repeated to each other when 

1 The only traditional saying of our Lord which has come down to us 
and is not quoted in the histories of His life, is that given by St. Paul in 
his address to the elders at Miletus, " Remember the words of our Lord 
Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive " (Acts 
xx. 35). 



104 TEE CHURCH OF TEE APOSTLES. 

gathered in remembrance of Him. Iso gorgeous cere- 
monies as yet adorned that rite — no perversions of its 
primitive meaning had yet crept into the Church ; but 
all partook of it with the same simplicity of spirit which 
had marked that little band of disciples who had first 
gathered in an " upper room " in Jerusalem. 

As centuries rolled by, there gradually grew up a . 
change of feeling in the Church with regard to this 
sacrament. At first, as we have shown, it was looked 
upon with a shadowy vagueness — as an inexplicable 
mystery, and this was often the very characteristic 
which so deeply impressed the minds of the partici- 
pants. It was with a solemn awe that they came for- 
ward to receive the sacred symbols of the Crucifixion ; 
it was the central point of the service ; but by a transi- 
tion so gradual that it was almost imperceptible, they 
imparted new characteristics to the elements, and con- 
centrated upon the Altar that feeling of veneration for 
the invisible presence of the Lord which the early wor- 
shipers felt for the whole Church. 1 

And this seems to have been the natural result of 
that warmth of Oriental eloquence with which the 
preachers of the faith endeavored to illustrate this mys- 
tery. All that the poetry of religion could inspire in 
those who dwelt near the cradle of our faith, or the 
glow T ing phrases of an Eastern tongue could frame to 
set forth the dignity of this rite, were lavished upon it. 
A\ r e see this in the bold imagery of St. Chrvsostom, 
when he appeals to his hearers in Constantinople, and 
uses, as figures of rhetoric, illustrations which he him- 
self never intended to be interpreted by the strict rules 

1 Milman's " Ecclcs. Hist,," ii., 316. 



EUCHARIST. 105 



of argument. Perhaps a couple of passages from one 
of his homilies may convey an idea of his style to our 
readers, and enable them to see how dangerous were 
such glowing pictures when placed before the fervid 
imagination of Greeks or Asiatics : 

"When you see this body before you," says the 
" golden-mouth " preacher, " say to yourself, this is the 
body which was nailed to the cross, but which death 
could not confine. It was this which the sun beheld 
fixed to the accursed tree, and instantly veiled his light. 
It was this that rent the veil, and burst the rocks, and 
convulsed the earth. Do you wish to comprehend the 
full extent of its powers ? Ask the daughter of afflic- 
tion, who touched the hem of the garment that encir- 
cled it. Ask the sea which bore this body on its sur- 
face. Ask Satan himself, 6 What has inflicted on thee 
this incurable wound ? What has robbed thee of thy 
strength ? Whence these chains and this captivity \ ' 
lie will answer, that this crucified body is the foe 
that hath broken his weapons, and hath bruised his 
head, and hath exposed to shame and defeat the princi- 
palities and powers of his kingdom. Ask Death, and 
say unto him : ' How hast thou been rifled of thy 
sting, and how hath thy victory been wrested from 
thee % How is it that thou hast become the laughing- 
stock of youths and maidens — thou that hast been the 
terror both of the ungodly and the righteous % ' They 
will both answer by accusing this mysterious body of 
their discomfiture and disgrace ; for when this body 
was crucified, then the dead arose, and the prison of the 
grave was burst open, and the tenants of the tomb were 
set free, and the wardens of hell were terror-stricken." 



106 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

And again, in another place, he speaks of the ele- 
ments still more strongly : " Behold, I show you, not an- 
gels, not archangels, nor the heaven of heavens, but the 
Master of all these ! Behold, the most precious of all 
things is exposed to your gaze ; and, not only so, but 
you are allowed to touch it and to handle it ; nay, not 
merely to touch it, but actually to feed upon it." ' 

But the evident anxiety to avoid any view of this 
rite which might lower its dignity, necessarily betrayed 
them into an opposite extreme. " Their language is 
frequently such as to identify the hallowed elements 
with the sacrifice they represented. When speaking 
with didactic caution, they would indeed carefully sep- 
arate the symbol from the object signified ; but when 
endeavoring to elevate the devotion of their hearers, 
they often forgot this watchfulness and discretion, and 
expressed themselves in terms which, frequently re- 
peated, would naturally familiarize the hearers with the 
notion that the body of our Saviour was actually and 
really present in the consecrated bread and wine." a 

In all ages, indeed, under every form of faith, the 
mind turned to these elements with an awe produced 
by a belief in the invisible presence of the Lord, and 
this the devout, through the whole Church, could not 
but feel. But this mysterious feeling, realized indeed 
by the mind, was one which it would have been very 
difficult to reduce to language. It was something widely 
different from the acknowledgment of that material and 
corporeal change which at length began to be asserted. 
Yet thus it was, that what at first was only the im- 

1 Chrysost., Horn, xxliii., Ed. Bouedic. 

2 Lc Bas's " Life of Wiclif." 



EUCHARIST. . 107 



passioned eloquence of the preacher, as years went by, 
became the customary language of the pulpit, and grad- 
ually grew to be the settled doctrine of the Church. It 
passed even beyond the sanction given by Oriental 
metaphors, and " that which the earlier Fathers, in 
their boldest figure, called only a bloodless sacrifice, be- 
came at last an actual oblation of the body and blood 
of Christ." ' 

Thus it was that, from the mere warmth of Oriental 
imagery, and the perversion of the language of the early 
writers, there grew up the doctrine of Transubstantia- 
tion, or the corporeal presence of the body and blood 
of Christ in the Sacrament — a doctrine which has now 
become a point of faith with the Church of Rome, and 
which forms the greatest barrier which separates us 
from it. Deeply as we reverence these sacred symbols 
of our Master's death, we cannot, as they do, bow in 
worship before them, for we cannot realize that they 
have been changed into our Incarnate Lord, and there- 
fore in us it would be idolatry. 

We have thus given briefly the historical account of 
this Sacrament, showing its origin — the manner of its 
administration in that early day — and the changes it 
underwent, as the superstition of men gradually per- 
verted it, until, instead of a symbol of peace, showing 
the love and union of our Lord's followers, it has be- 
come a theme of contention, dividing those who should 
be called by the same name, and debated with irrever- 
ent warmth by multitudes who might better copy the 
example of the Early Christians, and meditate and wor- 
ship in solemn silence. 

1 Milman's " Eccles. Hist.," ii., 316. 



108 THE CEUECn OF THE APOSTLES. 

It is indeed a sorrowful view thus to trace it down 
the stream of time — to leave, as it were, the atmosphere 
of those early days, when all was simplicity and purity 
of faith — and to pass away from the first followers of 
our Lord, men who were raised above death, and could 
defy the darkness of the grave, realizing that what to 
the world was the ending of every hope, to the Chris- 
tian was but the opening of eternal blessedness. Tor 
each century that we descend, we find a deeper shadow 
gathering over the Church, and the Sacraments of its 
early day sharing in the perversion which had affected 
every part. " The great mysteries of religion were 
hardened and distorted by a gross and carnal compre- 
hension of them." ' The converts of primitive times 
were men with the heroic and unbending faith of mar- 
tyrs, yet with the meekness of little children. Their 
hearts were bound together, their hopes centred in the 
single wish, to obtain an entrance into the Kingdom of 
Heaven. They were cheered and elevated by the sub- 
lime doctrines they had lately learned ; they had freed 
their minds from the damps and shadows of the sys- 
tems from which they had come out ; and the air they 
breathed seemed that of the Celestial City. To them 
there was a reality in this Sacrament. It awakened 
memories of Calvary ; it bound them to their fellow- 
Christians; it pointed them forward to the marriage- 
supper of the Lamb, of which they should one day 
partake with Him in Heaven. 

And then, when centuries of superstition had clouded 
this rite and perverted it, as we have seen, it was its 
Primitive meaning that our Church endeavored to revive. 
1 Bourdon's " Life of Gregory TIL," v., ii., p. 24 '. 



EUCHARIST. 109 



It has been stripped, therefore, of all the additions which 
had been gathered about it ; and it is presented to us, 
as it was to the Christians of the first century, a symbol 
of our Lord's crucifixion, and a means of grace and 
spiritual strength which He has designed to strengthen 
His children's hearts, and to keep them in remembrance 
of Him till He come again. 

This rite then connects us in spirit with the myriads 
of our Lord's followers who have gone before us ; with 
the holy and the just whose names, in ages past, were 
written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Like the Early 
Christians, then, let us "continue steadfastly in the 
breaking of bread." To us everything about the Sacra- 
ment of our Lord's death should be consoling. It 
should not be invested with the gloom with which so 
many array it. It is not like that Mount about which 
the thousands of Israel' gathered with trembling; the 
Mount that "burned with fire," whose. top was envel- 
oped in " blackness, and darkness, and tempest," and 
from which issued thunders and voices so terrible, that 
even good men "exceedingly feared and quaked." x 
This holy ordinance was not designed to be a fiery or- 
deal, through which none but the sinless could safely 
pass. It was intended for the edification of the fol- 
lowers of Christ, yea, even of the feeblest. It is to 
strengthen within them every Christian grace, and to 
be to them a channel of living power while, like the 
Magi of old, they are passing through the clouds and 
darkness of earth to their God at last. 

There is, indeed, no mysterious, physical efficacy in 
the mere act of eating that consecrated bread ; and yet, 

1 Heb. xii. 18. 



110 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

if we come forward with proper feelings, with " honest 
and good hearts," onr spiritual strength will be in- 
creased, our Christian views enlarged and purified, and 
invigorated, and we shall find that for a time Ave have 
passed away from the strife and conflict of this lower 
world, and stand upon the Mount of Transfiguration, 
where our Lord reveals Himself, and glimpses are grant- 
ed to us of that world of joy, where we shall eat of the 
Tree of Life, and drink of those bright waters which 
flow from the throne of God forever. 

And when the dream of this life is over, and hope 
has given place to full fruition, it is thus that Banyan 
describes the reality of the Pilgrim's hopes : 

" Now I saw in my dream that they went in at the 
gate of the Celestial City, and lo ! as they entered, they 
were transfigured ; and they had raiment put on that 
shone like gold. There were also that met them with 
harps and crowns, and gave them to them — the harps to 
praise withal, and the crowns in token of honor. Then 
I heard in my dream that all the bells in the city rang 
again for joy, and that it was said unto them, ' Enter 
ye in to the joy of our Lord.' 

" I also heard the men themselves, that they sang 
with a loud voice, saying, 'Blessing and honor, and 
glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the 
Throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever.' 

" Now, just as the gates were opened to let in the 
men, I looked in after them, and, behold, the city shone 
like the sun, the streets also were paved with gold, and 
in them walked many with crowns on their heads, palms 
in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises withal. 

" There were also of them that had wings, and they 



EUCHARIST. HI 



answered one another without intermission, saying, 

' Hoi j, holy, holy is the Lord ! ' And after that they 

shut up the gates, which, when I had seen, 1 wished 
myself among them." 



IV. 

LITURGIES. 



Though Babel's curse rests on the world forlorn, 
And language, clime, and heart asunder rends ; 

Yet in the unfailing Church, by age unworn, 

Thy blessing still is fresh, thou Pentecostal morn ! 

One soul, one tongue is there ; th' Eternal Son 

Dwells in her living courts, forever one." 

The Cathedral 



IV. 
LITTJEGIES. 

With the early Christians, living under the awaken- 
ing impulse of their new-born hopes, Time was noth- 
ing — Eternity was everything. So absorbed were they 
in the contemplation of a future world, that we find it 
was necessary for their teachers to recall them to their 
daily duties, and to inculcate the lesson that this life 
also had its claims upon them. They felt that they 
stood in jeopardy every hour, and must "die daily." 
The sands of the amphitheatre were red with the blood 
of their slaughtered brethren, and often they were forced 
to gaze upon the ruddy glare of the martyr's fires, in 
which so many of their fellow-confessors were wafted 
up to Heaven. Life with them, therefore, became 
valueless, because they knew that its light must soon 
vanish, and be lost in the brighter glory of the coming 
world. Is it strange, then, that thus nursed in vicissi- 
tudes, and beaten by the rough winds of life, they were 
bold and fervent — men of mailed and impervious forti- 
tude, ready to defy the world, prepared for torments 
and armed for death ? 

And whence could they derive this courage but 
from another world ? To it, then, they constantly as- 
pired, and every wish and hope were merged in the 



116 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

single desire to wage well their warfare here, so that 
the j might win the prize of immortality. To them 
the gates of Eternity seemed ever open. They listened 
to the anthems of the blessed, and shrank with trem- 
bling from the wailings of the lost. They prayed with 
an earnestness which brought every sense into unison 
with the heart-felt petitions rising from the very depths 
of their souls. They realized the chain which bound 
them to the throne of the Eternal. It was to them a 
living reality — and therefore " they continued stead- 
fastly in prayer." 

We see from the Xew Testament record how un- 
ceasing was the intercourse of the first Christian con- 
verts with the Saviour who had lately parted from 
them and gone into Heaven ; how often they came to 
that mercy -seat, to which they had just learned their 
right of access through the sacrifice of their risen Lord. 
When St. Peter returned to them, miraculously re- 
leased from prison, it was in the words of prayer and 
praise that their joy found utterance. In the dungeon 
Paul and Silas sang praises and raised the voice of 
prayer, till the astonished prisoners heard them. This 
became, indeed, the characteristic mark of the Christian 
—the trait by which he was known— and when, there- 
fore, Saul had turned to the faith, and a vision from 
God informed Ananias of the change, he is not told 
directly that the most bitter enemy of the Christians 
had himself become a convert, but the news is conveyed 
to him in the announcement, " Behold, he prayeth ! n 

This characteristic did not expire with the first gen- 
eration of Christians. We recognize it also as the trait 
of their successors, and it took long years for faith to 



LITURGIES. 117 



grow dim and zeal to be quenched before the spirit of 
prayer also failed. As long as persecution continued, 
and they were obliged, in preaching the Gospel, to con- 
front a dark and lowering world ; so long as their testi- 
mony was delivered before those who might " turn again 
and rend them," they felt the impotency of an arm of 
flesh, and looked only to Heaven for aid and strength. 

In some cases their prayers have been preserved to 
us, caught as they fell from their lips in the hour of 
suffering and death, and treasured up by their brethren 
as a precious legacy — the martyr's last bequest to those 
he left behind, still contending in the struggle of this 
lower world. Such was the prayer of the martyr Poly- 
carp, the disciple of St. John, as he was bound to the 
stake. Through almost eighteen centuries it has come 
down to us, valuable not only for the ardent devotion 
which breathes through every sentence, but also for its 
testimony to truths which the impiety of later days has 
called in question. How earnestly, for instance, does 
he recognize the divinity of our Lord, when thus he 
makes his appeal to the Father ! — 

" Father of Thy beloved and blessed Son, Jesus 
Christ, through whom we have received the knowledge 
of Thee, God of angels and powers, and of all the 
creation and of all the generations of the righteous who 
live in Thy presence, I bless Thee, because Thou hast 
thought me worthy of this day and this hour, to take 
part in the number of Thy martyrs, in the cup of 
Christ, to the resurrection of soul and body in the in- 
corruptible felicity of the Holy Spirit, among whom 
may I be received this day into Thy presence, as a 
rich and acceptable sacrifice, as Thou hast before or- 



118 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

dained and hast now fulfilled ; Thou, who art the faith- 
ful and true God. For this, and for all things, I praise 
Thee, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, through the Eternal 
High-Priest Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, through 
whom be glory to Thee, with Him, in the Holy Spirit, 
both now and unto all ages to come." * 

But it is to the more public and stated worship of 
the Christians in those ages that we would particularly 
refer. Of the prayers they offered as individuals we 
can know but little. Then, they were most often alone 
with God, and when they wrestled with Him in the 
deep agony of their souls, none but He heard them, and 
it was left for their Father who seeth in secret to re- 
ward them openly. But of their public and common 
prayers the record has come down to us, preserving 
even the words in which these ancient Christians en- 
shrined their petitions. We still have the ancient litur- 
gies, which in that day were heard in every church 
from the plains of India to the shores of Western Europe. 

Beginning at the earliest day, we can see by allu- 
sions in Scripture, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in 
the Epistles, that some system of ritual must have been 
established in the Churches. We may say it was coeval 
with the organization of the Church itself. We can- 
not, of course, expect plain directions on these points, 
for the Epistles were not written to enforce or prescribe 
the ritual of religion. All we can expect is, if it ex- 
isted in the Apostles' days, to find some allusions show- 
ing an acquiescence in it. In most cases it must have 
rested on unwritten directions from the founders of 
these Churches. When, for instance, St. Paul went 

1 Euselmis, "Eecles. Hist.," lib. iv., chap. 15. 



LITURGIES. 110 



from city to city, and everywhere gathered congrega- 
tions into the infant Church, he must at the same time 
have given them some system of worship or ritual. Their 
very existence depended on their having this to take 
the place of their old Jewish or heathen rites ; and in 
the next generation these rules rested only on tradition. 

We can find, indeed, in St. Paul's writings, illustra- 
tions of the fact that there were traditions of Church 
regulations and customs handed down, which were not 
prescribed in Scripture, but which they were bound to 
observe. He writes to the Thessalonians, " Therefore, 
brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye 
have been taught, whether by word or our Epistle." * 
It is on this principle that he settles the question with 
the Corinthians, that men should wear their hair short, 
and that women should have their heads covered dur- 
ing divine service. Here is a point on which Scripture 
gives no direction, but the Apostle begins by implying 
that it was one of many rules or traditions (Trapa&ocreLs) 
which he had given then, and which they were bound 
to observe. " Keep the ordinances as I delivered them 
to you." 2 The word here translated ordinances, in the 
margin of the English Bibles is rendered traditions. 
In conclusion, he refuses to argue with one who cavils 
at or rejects this rule. " If any man seem to be con- 
tentious, we have no such custom, neither the Churches 
of God." 

The truth which this opens to us should prevent 
any surprise on our part at many rites which were in 
use in the Primitive Church, but which are not men- 
tioned in the New Testament. It was the spirit of that 

i 2 Thess. ii. 15. 2 1 Cor. xi. 2. 



120 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

early day which St. Chrysostom has embodied in a sin- 
gle sentence, " He who is dnly strengthened in faith 
does not go so far as to require argument and reason 
for what is enjoined, but is satisfied with the tradition 
alone." 1 

There was evidently in that day a wide system of 
unwritten discipline, the multitude of whose details it 
was impossible for St. Paul to enumerate in writing to 
the Corinthians, and he could, therefore, only remind 
them of his ways while he was among them. He 
writes, " I praise you that ye remember me in all 
things." These matters could only be inculcated by 
the voice of the living minister, and, as he could not 
visit them in person, he sent Timothy in his place, 
whose special object was to remind them of the Apos- 
tle's teaching. He says, "For this cause have I sent 
unto you Timotheus, who shall bring you into remem- 
brance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every- 
where in every Church." 

Tertullian has well illustrated the duty of obedience 
to tradition, when, referring to some rites, he says : 
" Though this observance has not been determined by 
any text of Scripture, yet it is established by custom, 
which doubtless is derived from Apostolic tradition. 
For how can a usage ever obtain which has not first 
been given by tradition 1 But you say, ' Even though 
tradition can be produced, still a written (Scripture) 
authority must be demanded.' Let us examine, then, 
how far it is true that an Apostolic tradition itself, un- 
less written in Scripture, is inadmissible. Xow, I will 
give up the point at once, if it is not already determined 

1 In 1 Cor., Horn. 26. 



LITURGIES. 121 



by instances of other observances, which are maintained 
without any Scripture proof, on the mere plea of tradi- 
tion and the sanction of consequent custom. To begin 
with baptism. Before we enter the water, we solemnly 
renounce the devil, his pomp, and his angels, in Church, 
in the presence of the Bishop. Then we are plunged 
in the water thrice, and answer certain questions over 
and above what the Lord has determined in the written 
Gospel. . . . The Sacrament of the Eucharist, though 
given by the Lord to all, and at supper-time, yet is 
celebrated in our meetings before daybreak, and only at 
the hand of our presiding ministers. . . . 

" If you demand a Scripture rule for these and such 
like observances, we can give you none ; all we say to 
you is that tradition directs, usage sanctions, faith obeys. 
That reason justifies this tradition, usage, and faith, you 
will soon yourself see, or will easily learn from others ; 
meanwhile you will do well to believe that there is a 
law to which obedience is due. . . . These instances are 
enough to show that a tradition, even though not in 
Scripture, still binds our conduct if a continuous usage 
be preserved as the witness of it." x 

And this is exactly the ground taken by our own 
Church in the Thirty - nine Articles. In Article 
XXXIV., " Of the Traditions of the Church," it says, 
" Whosoever, through his private judgment, willingly 
and purposely, cloth openly break the Traditions and 
Ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to 
the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by 
common authority, ought to be rebuked openly." 

Now, the object of this argument has been to show 

1 Tertullian, "De Coron. " sec. 3. 



122 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

that there must have been a system of Rites and Ser- 
vices in the Early Church, which claimed the obedience 
of its members, but did not exist in their written law. 
If, therefore, we do not find this Ritual plainly devel- 
oped in Scripture, it is no proof that it did not exist. 

There is another consideration. Christians in that 
day were surrounded by unbelievers, and we may im- 
agine, therefore, that, in their intercourse with each 
other, they would exercise a prudent caution with re- 
gard to their mode of worship. This reserve would be 
exhibited particularly by their teachers ; and the more 
regular and uniform was the administration of Divine 
Service in the Infant Church, the less likely would the 
Apostles treat of it, particularly in their written com- 
munications to the Churches. 

This reason, indeed, is plainly given by St. Basil : 
" Of those articles of doctrine and preaching, which 
are in the custody of the Church, some come to us in 
Scripture itself, some are conveyed to us by a continu- 
ous tradition in mystical depositories. Both have equal 
claims on our devotion, and are received by all — at least 
by all who are in any respect Churchmen. For should 
we attempt to supersede the usages which are not en- 
joined in Scripture as unimportant, we should do most 
serious injury to Evangelical truth — nay, reduce it to a 
bare name. 

" To take an obvious instance : Which Apostle has 
taught us in Scripture to sign believers with the cross \ 
Where does Scripture teach us to turn to the East in 
prayer I Which of the Saints has left us recorded in 
Scripture the words of invocation at the consecration of 
the bread of the Eucharist and of the cup of bles^ i 



LITURGIES. 12< 



Thus we are not content with what Apostle or Evan- 
gelist has left on record, but we add other rites before 
and after it, as important to the celebration of the Mys- 
tery, receiving them from a teaching distinct from 
Scripture. . . . After the example of Moses, the Apos- 
tles and Fathers who modeled the Churches were accus- 
tomed to lodge their sacred doctrine in mystic forms, as 
being secretly and silently conveyed. . . . This is the 
reason why there is a tradition of observances indepen- 
dent of Scripture, lest doctrines, oeing exposed to the 
world, should he so familiar as to oe despised." 1 

He adds another reason for the Ritual not being 
given in Scripture: that the Rites were memorials of 
doctrines not intended for publication except among 
baptized Christians, whereas the Scriptures were open 
to all men. This, at least, is clear, that the Ritual could 
scarcely have been given in detail in Scripture without 
imparting to the Gospel the character of a burdensome 
ceremonial, and withdrawing our attention from its 
doctrines and precepts. 2 

Again, these Rites must necessarily have been grad- 
ual in their growth, until they developed into the full 
Ritual System of later years. The Christians in their 
concealment in hidden retreats, where alone they could 
hold their services, could not be expected to have a per- 
fect system of Ritual. They could only illustrate the 
simplest points of their faith, and their symbolism — as 
we now see in the Catacombs at Rome — was confined 
to these. It may be admitted, therefore, that the con- 
struction of a Liturgy by the Apostles was a progressive 

1 St. Basil on " Holy Spirit," sec. 66. 

2 Tracts (Oxford), No. 34. 



124 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

work. But the New Testament itself was thus formed 
step by step, for even between the writing of the Gos- 
pels of St. Matthew and St. John fifty years elapsed. 
We may imagine, too, that the work of Christian in- 
struction would naturally so engross the time of the 
Apostles that much less could be devoted to that of 
the Liturgy. Such was the case at Troas, where the 
" breaking of bread " — that is to say, the celebration of 
the Eucharist — was delayed till midnight, in conse- 
quence of the length of the Apostle's preaching, which 
he resumed again after the celebration of the Mysteries, 
and continued till daybreak. But as soon as the Chris- 
tian Church was founded in any city, with the estab- 
lishment of the Ministry, the external forms received 
enlargement, and the performance of Divine Service 
became more solemn. 1 

Thus St. Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthi- 
ans, represents that Church as already performing the 
Service of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, yet he con- 
siders it necessary that he should repeat his visit, to ar- 
range all things in a more perfect way. This is the 
interpretation invariably given by the Fathers to the 
concluding words of the passage in which he speaks of 
the Eucharist — " The rest will I set in order when I 
come." St. Jerome, in his commentary on this passage, 
refers it to the Eucharist, and St. Augustine, in his 
Letter to Januarius, more fully says, " These words 
give us to understand that in the same way as he had, 
in the course of his Epistle, made allusion to the usages 
of the Church Catholic (on the matter and essence of 
the Sacrament), lie afterward himself instituted (at 

1 " Institutions Liturgiques," par l'Abbe Gu6 ranger, Paris, 1840. 



LITURGIES. 125 



Corinth) those Kites, the -universality of which is unaf- 
fected by any difference of manners." l 

And now, having show T n the probability of there 
being a Ritual, though not specifically set forth in the 
writings of the Apostles, let us pass on one step further, 
and show the positive existence of this Liturgy by trac- 
ing allusions either in the Scriptures or the early writers 
which have a reference to the forms, which are substan- 
tially those we now use. 

We might draw some Scripture sanction from the 
minuteness of the Jewish Ceremonial, for it would be 
difficult to affirm that w T hat was once the subject of a 
Divine command, given with so much particularity, 
could be at any time unsuited to human nature, or im- 
proper for w r orship. The revelations of Christianity 
have not changed man's spiritual nature. The very 
object which all this u pomp and circumstance " was 
designed to promote then is as important with us now — 
that is, the realizing of the greatness and awfulness of 
God. In fact, it applies with so much more force to 
us, as the Christian has a more solemn nearness to God, 
through His Son, than had the Jews. 2 But we have 
actual intimations in the New Testament of the same 
principle being continued. 

That noble, supplicatory Hymn, to which we have 
before alluded, in which the first Christians uplifted 
their voices in praise w T hen St. Peter was miraculously 
released from prison, proves, by the technical nicety of 
its construction, that it was an anthem of the Church 
with which they were well acquainted, and not an effu- 
sion of the moment. 

1 Ibid , p. 31. 2 " British Critic," vol. xxx., p. 444. 



126 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

In the opening of the Acts of the Apostles, we have 
the " breaking of bread," and then, in the First Epistle 
to the Corinthians, St. Paul points out the Liturgical 
importance of this rite. And even in the first estab- 
lishment of the Church, how grand was the Service, 
as we learn from early writers, in which it was cele- 
brated ! " We have an altar," ' says St. Paul, and at 
this the rites were administered. Around it were ar- 
ranged, in accordance with the picture of the celestial 
worship given by St. John, 2 first, in front, the Apostle 
or Bishop ; on the right and left were the Priests, sym- 
bolizing the four-and-twenty elders ; and near the altar, 
the Deacons and other Ministers, suggesting the idea 
of the Angels who wait, in the attitude of servants, 
about the Heavenly Throne. This is the picture given 
by early writers, and this arrangement of the seats is 
still observed in the Apses of Churches in the East. 
And if, in the West, this primitive custom has fallen 
into disuse, the Church of Eome has maintained the 
tradition in the arrangement of the choir of several of 
the ancient Churches, and follows it precisely when- 
ever the Pope celebrates, or assists pontifically, in any 
one of the Patriarchal Basilicas. 3 

The faithful being assembled, the Service began. 
The celebrant, precisely as he now does, read from the 
Apostolical Epistles, and recited a portion of the Holy 
Gospel. This in the early day was the Catechumen's 
Service, being that portion in which he was permitted 
to take part. St. Paul says to the Colossians, "When 
this Epistle is read among you, cause that it be read 
also in the Church of the Laodiceans," and in writing to 

1 Heb xiii. 10. 2 Rev. iv. 3 Abbe Gueraiiirer. 



LITURGIES. 127 



the Tliessalonians he adds, " I charge you by the Lord 
that this Epistle be read unto all the holy brethren." 
And we learn that this injunction had the force of law 
from the first, for, in the latter part of the second cen- 
tury, St. Justin, in his description of the Service, says, 
" The Epistles of the Apostles are read." As to the 
reading of the Gospel, Ensebius informs us that the 
narrative of our Lord's actions, from the pen of St. 
Mark, was approved by St. Peter, to be " read in all 
the Churches." 

The salutation to the people — " The Lord be with 
you ! " — was one with which all were familiar before 
Christian times. Itw T as in use under the Ancient Law. 
With these words Boaz addresses the reapers, 1 and un- 
der the new Dispensation it holds its place in all the 
Liturgies of the East and West. 

The Collects, according to St. Augustine, were in all 
the ancient Liturgies. The conclusion of the prayers — 
" for ever and ever " — has likewise been used from the 
remotest antiquity. So, the custom of responding, 
"Amen," can be traced to the Apostolic Age. St. 
Paul himself alludes to it in his First Epistle to the 
Corinthians. 3 

Before the consecration, St. Cyprian tells us, came 
the Preface. We can trace it back to the very cradle 
of the Church. Then the Priest gave the Exhortation, 
" Lift up your hearts ! " and the people responded, 
" We lift them up unto the Lord." Then comes the 
form of thanksgiving, which St. Cyril, in addressing the 
Catechumens of Jerusalem, a Church certainly of Apos- 
tolic foundation, explains to them, " Gratias agamus 

1 Kuth iv. 4. 2 1 Cor. xv. 16. 



128 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

Domino Deo nostro ! Dignum et justum est." (We 
give thanks unto the Lord our God ! It is right and 
meet.) How entirely have we retained this in the 
ascription : "It is very meet, right, and our bounden 
duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give 
thanks unto Thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, 
Everlasting God ! " 

Next comes the Seraphic Hymn, " Sanctus, Sanctus, 
Sanctus Dominus." (Holy, holy, holy, Lord God.) 
Isaiah, under the Old Dispensation, heard it chanted at 
the foot of the throne of Jehovah ; ' under the New, 
the prophet of Patmos repeats it as he heard it snng 
before the Throne of the Lamb. 3 This chant of sur- 
passing praise, thus revealed to the world, found its 
echo in every Christian Church. Every Liturgy recog- 
nizes it, and nowhere is there any form in which the 
Eucharist was offered, which does not include it. 

Then comes the " Protracted Prayer," as St. Jerome 
terms it, and it was to this the Early Fathers say that 
St. Paul referred, when he writes to Timothy, that 
" supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of 
thanks, be made for all men." 3 Thus it is that St. 
Augustine comments on this passage : " In these words, 
we understand, with the whole or nearly the whole 
Church, by supplications, those which we use in the 
celebration of the Sacraments, before the Benediction of 
what is on the Lord's Table ; by prayers^ those in the 
Benediction and Sanctification, and breaking for distri- 
bution, the whole of which act of supplication is, in al- 
most every Church, concluded by the Lord's Prayer ; 
by intercessions , or, as our manuscripts have it, cn- 

1 Isaiah vi. 3. 9 Rev. iv. 8. 3 1 Tim. ii. 1. 



LITURGIES. 129 



treaties (postulations), those used in blessing the people. 
For then it is that the Priests, in their character of ad- 
vocates, present their clients to the Heavenly clemency. 
Finally, when all is over, and the ' so great sacrifice ' 
has been participated, the whole is concluded by giving 
of thanksP 

After the Consecration, and while the elements are 
on the Altar, this " Canonical Prayer " having been 
brought to a conclusion, the Lord's Prayer is pronounced. 
" For," says St. Jerome, " Christ Himself taught His 
Apostles to say daily in faith, with boldness, at the offer- 
ing of His Body, our Father," etc. 1 

The celebrant then proceeds to the breaking of the 
Bread, whereby he imitates the action of our Lord Him- 
self, who took the bread, blessed and brake it. In the 
distribution, the same form was always used, even from 
the first Institution of this Eite, that which St. Paul 
recorded in his account of the celebration of this Sacra- 
ment. 2 

Thus it is that we trace, 3 even in Apostolic times, 
the outline of our Eucharistic Office, and we find that 
all the solemn prayers and ceremonies we now enjoy, 
have come down to us from the earliest centuries. 

The testimony, indeed, of all tradition is, that even 
from the first, as soon as the Church was organized so 
as to regulate its public worship, stated forms were 
used, in which all could join. Four of these Liturgies 
which are still extant, and bear the names of different 

1 " Adv. Pelag.," 1, 18. 2 1 Cor. xi. 24. 

3 For many of these points we are indebted to the Abbe Gueranger. 
His " Institutions Liturgiques" is written indeed from a Romish point 
of view, but his array of historical facts is valuable. 



130 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

Apostles, are evidently those from which all subsequent 
Liturgies were derived. Of their origin we know not, 
except what the traditions of the different Chinches 
have given us, but they can be traced back to that 
period when the words of our Lord still lingered in the 
memories of His followers, and men were yet living 
who had known Apostles, and talked with those who 
had seen their Master in the flesh. 

The first of these — the Great Oriental Liturgy — 
bears the name of St. James, and seems to have prevailed 
in all the Churches of the East, from the Euphrates to 
the Hellespont, and from the Hellespont to the southern 
extremity of Greece. 

The second — the Alexandrian — attributed to St. 
Mark, from time immemorial has been the Liturgy of 
Egypt, Abyssinia, and the country extending along the 
Mediterranean Sea toward the AYest. 

The third was — the Roman — bearing the name of 
St. Peter, which prevailed throughout the whole of 
Italy, Sicily, and some of the Dioceses in Africa. 

The fourth was — the Gallic an — called after St. 
John, and derived originally from the Church at Ephe- 
sus. It was used in Gaul and Spain, and throughout 
Western Europe. 1 

There is one circumstance connected with these four 
Liturgies which deserves our notice. It is the striking 
similarity between them all, not only in doctrine, but 
also in expression and arrangement. Mr. Palmer as- 
serts, 2 that all the ancient Liturgies now existing, or 
which can be proved to have existed in those early days, 

1 For the best discussion of the Ancient Liturgies, see Xeale's " His- 
tory of the Holy Eastern Church." - " Oi ig. Liturg." 



LITURGIES. 131 



resemble one another in all essential features. This, of 
course, strengthens the argument for their antiquity and 
their derivation from the same origin. For among the 
changes which were going on through so many ages, 
in the formation everywhere of new Dioceses, nothing 
but a reverence for the Apostolical source from which 
these original Liturgies were believed to be derived, 
could have prevented an infinite variety of formularies, 
and preserved the substantial uniformity which we find 
to have prevailed in vast districts of the Primitive 
Church. Separate Liturgies were indeed often used in 
Provincial Churches, for each Bishop had the right to 
compose one for his own diocese as long as he did not 
violate the unity of the faith. Changes, therefore, were 
made, adapting it to local circumstances, and the Calen- 
dar was usually constructed to introduce Festivals in 
honor of the Saints and Martyrs who had lived and 
died among them. Still, as we have remarked, there 
was no material difference from the Great Liturgies 
which they copied. " The order of the parts was always 
preserved, the same rites and ceremonies continually 
repeated, the same ideas and language without material 
variation, transmitted from generation to generation." x 
And so, *for eighteen hundred years, these Great 
Liturgies have gone on in different parts of the world, 
yet gradually altering and becoming more unlike each 
other and the early forms which have come down to 
us, as through passing centuries they were adapted to 
the changing exigencies of particular Churches. And 
here again we are called to mark that contrast of Ori- 
ental and Western character to which we have before 

1 Palmer's " Orig. Li tuig.,'' Preface, p. 9. 



132 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

referred in the sketch of Arianism. In the changes of 
the Ritual we see the same influences at work. 

" The East is more uniform and unchanging ; the 
West more multiform and variable. Witness the sin- 
gle, changeless Invitatory and Benediction of the one 
Church, and their endless variations in the other. While 
the West rings countless changes, according to the 
season, on the same essential idea, the East prolongs it 
in one unvaried and majestic toll, from the beginning 
to the end of the year. The East, again, is more rapt, 
the West more intellectual. The East loves rather to 
meditate on God as He is, and on the facts of Christian 
doctrine as they stand in the Creed ; the West contem- 
plates more practically the great phenomena of Chris- 
tian psychology, and the relations of man to God. 
Hence, Psalms and Hymns in more profuse abundance 
characterize the Eastern, larger use and more elaborate 
adaptations of Scripture the Western Offices. The East, 
by making the Psalms all her meditation, seems to de- 
clare her mind that praise is the only way to knowl- 
edge ; the West, by her combined Psalm and Lection 
system, that knowledge is the proper fuel of praise. 
While the East, again, soars to God in exclamations of 
angelic self-f orgetfulness, the West comprehends all the 
spiritual needs of man in Collects of matchless pro- 
fundity, reminding us of the alleged distinction between 
the seraphim, who love most, and the cherubim, who 
know most. Thus, the East praises, the West pleads ; 
the one has fixed her eye more intently on the glory- 
throne of Christ, the other on His cross. Finally, the 
East has been more inquisitive and inventive in the de- 
partments both of knowledge and praise ; the West, 



LITURGIES. 133 



more constructive, lias wrought up, out of scattered 
Eastern materials, lier exhaustive Athanasian Creed and 
her matchless Te Deum." 1 

And strange is it that the Anglican Kitual, while it 
may fail in largeness and beauty in comparison with 
other Rituals, yet possesses more fully the spirit of these 
early services than any other. Of the ancient forms 
how few are now heard in the Churches of Europe ! 
The Gallican and the Spanish have been extinct for 
centuries, or survive only in the merest fragments. Oth- 
ers, as the Roman and the Milanese, are used only for 
the devotions of the clergy. In truth, the Offices of the 
Western Church, from the sixth to the sixteenth cen- 
tury, were, by their origin and their general cast and 
scheme, monastic, and bear this deeply impressed upon 
their structure. The study, therefore, of these Western 
Offices in their old form is an antiquarian one, like the 
study of a dead language. As public Services of the 
Church these ancient and grand Offices nowhere exist. 
The exquisite harmony has ceased. Lauds and Prime, 
Antiphon and Responsory, are heard no more as they 
were in the ancient Church. 2 

In our own Liturgy alone the ancient Western Offices 
really survive. " Psalmody, Scripture, responsive Can- 
ticles, Preces, Collects, the media of Europe's ancient 
worship, banished from all other lands, have taken ref- 
uo-e in the Churches of the English Communion. The 
English Church is in this matter the heir of the world. 
She may have diminished her inheritance, but all other 
Western Churches have thrown it away." 3 

1 Freeman's " Principles of Divine Service," p. 273. 

2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 219. 



134: THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

. . . . " Quod (piserinius, Lie est, 
Aut nusquam." 

The Liturgy of the Church of England was derived 
from the Gallican, and introduced into that country by 
St. Augustin ; it has thus an Oriental, not a Roman 
origin. The venerable Bede has preserved the letter 
of St. Gregory the Great to St. Augustin, in answer 
to one in which he announced that Britain had received 
the faith, and inquires as to the different Bituals. But 
St. Gregory tells him he need not follow the Roman 
Ritual, as such, in which he had been brought up, but 
to select what he found best in the Roman, Gallican, 
or other Churches. " Choose, therefore," he writes, 
" from every Church those things which are pious, re- 
ligious, and upright, and having, as it were, made them 
up in one mass, let the minds of the English be accus- 
tomed thereto." ' 

Now, St. Augustin, while on his journey to Eng- 
land, spent some time at Marseilles, and between his 
two visits to England he went to Aries, and there it 
was he received consecration. lie probably, therefore, 
adopted the Gallican Ritual, in accordance with the ad- 
vice of St. Gregory. It is in consequence of this Gal- 
lic descent that we can trace a greater resemblance in 
the old English Services to the Oriental than to the 
Roman forms. 

The Reformation, in the beginning of the sixteenth 
century, found the Chmch of England still in posses- 
sion of this precious legacy, though deformed by the 
additions it had received during ages of superstition. 
These were swept away, and it was restored again to 
Rede's "Eccles. Hist," p. 47. 



LITURGIES. 135 



its primitive simplicity. So clear were the revisers on 
this point, that Cranmer (as Jeremy Taylor has record- 
ed) offered to prove that " the order of the Chnrch of 
England, set out by authority by Edward VI., was the 
same that had been used in the Church for fifteen hun- 
dred years past." Her children now, therefore, utter 
the same prayers which in the earliest centuries of our 
faith, on each returning Sunday, were uplifted at Ephe- 
sus, at Antioch, in the north of Africa, and through 
Western Europe. 1 How impressive is the thought of 
the wide-spread use of these ancient forms, as they are 
now repeated in many a strange tongue over the whole 
earth ! " The fullness of the stream is the glory of the 
fountain ; and it is because the Ganges is not lost 
among its native hills, but deepens and widens until it 
reaches the ocean, that so many pilgrimages are made 
to its springs." 2 

Each one of us may adopt the words of the poet 3 : 

"Mine is no solitary choice, 

See here the seal of saints impressed ; 
The prayer of millions swells my voice — 
The mind of ages fills my breast." 

It is this which gives so great an historical interest 

1 The present Duke of Argyll, in referring to the fact that so many 
leading Scotch families had "left the communion of Presbytery and 
joined that of the English Church," says: "Very few have been induced 
to do so by any previous conversion to Church principles. . . . The 
deeper source of the extensive alienation which has taken place, is to be 
found in the superior attractions of a more Ritual worship, in the weak- 
ness of a predominantly dogmatic and informal system, to keep up per- 
manent attachment in times of religious peace." — Edinburgh Review, vol. 
xcv., p. 477. 

2 "Bishop Thirwall's Charge," 1857. 3 Cunningham. 



136 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

to our Service, increasing as we become better ac- 
quainted with the origin of its prayers. They connect 
us with important eras of the Church in far-distant 
ages, and with saintly and heroic men, whose names 
have been wafted down to us as leaders in the troublous 
times in which they lived. The Prayer-Book has, 
therefore, been truly called " a long gallery of Ecclesi- 
astical History." As, for instance, we chant the Te 
Deum — it carries us back to the days when St. Ambrose 
first uplifted it in the Church at Milan. The Litany 
was given to the Latin Church by Gregory the Great. 
It was when troubles were gathering about the " Eter- 
nal City " — when it was devastated by " war, pestilence, 
and famine" — that it seemed good to him to gather 
from the ancient existing Litanies all that could best 
call forth the penitential devotion of the Church, thus 
" drawing the flower of them all into one." ' From the 
great Patriarch of the Byzantine Church, the eloquent 
St. Chrysostom, we derive the last prayer with which 
our Service closes. The " Veni, Creator Spiritus," 
brings up again the remembrance of St. Ambrose, 
among whose works it was placed as a Hymn for Pente- 
cost, and always used in the Roman Church in that day, 
till it was transferred to the Office for the Consecration 
of a Bishop. 2 

And then with what added interest can we utter the 
Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity when we re- 
member the circumstances under which it was first in- 
corporated into the Service — that it was amid the expir- 
ing agonies which marked the closing days of the Roman 
Empire, when " men's hearts were failing them for 
1 Ilooker's "Eccles. Pol," lib. v., sec. 42. - Dean Comber. 



LITURGIES. 137 



fear " lest the mighty edifice which was tottering to its 
fall might crush, too, the Church with which it was so 
intimately connected ! Then, indeed, the true-hearted 
might well pray, " Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, 
that the course of this world may be so peaceably or- 
dered by Thy governance that Thy Church may joy- 
fully serve Thee in all godly quietness, through Jesus 
Christ our Lord." 

We have gathered, indeed, into this Liturgy the 
treasures of the olden time, reaching back even to the 
far -distant Hebrew Church, and appropriating its 
Hymns of penitence and triumph, so that the Songs of 
the Kingly Poet of Israel have become the Anthems of 
the Christian Church. And with these strains from 
the ancient Tabernacle may be made the utterance of 
every feeling, whether of sorrow for sin, of thanksgiv- 
ing for the past, or of prayer for the future. They 
speak the voice of Humanity, no matter what are the 
circumstances which call it forth. They are adapted to 
every exigency of our changing life — to joy and sorrow 
— to the petition for pardon and the Psalm of thanksgiv- 
ing — and they who have attempted to improve on them, 
or to find more fitting words in which to clothe their 
devotions, have discovered that nothing else could equal 
their fullness and variety. And now let us give a 
single instance of this, which History furnishes. 

More than two centuries ago, on a wild December 
day, a band of pilgrims landed on the rock-bound coast 
of New England. For months they had been storm- 
tossed upon the ocean, while the land to which their 
hopes were directed receded in the distant horizon. 
Yet now they were safe from the perils of the sea at 



138 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

least, and we are told, on the bleak and inhospitable shore 
they offered up their gratitude to the Power which had 
rescued them from the deep. The language of poetry 
has consecrated their worship, as it recorded the fact 
that— 

"They shook the depths of the desert's gloom 
With their hymns of lofty cheer. 
Amid the storm they sang, 

And the stars heard and the sea, 
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 
To the anthems of the free." * 

We know not in what words they presented their 
thanksgivings, yet they were probably phrases suggested 
by the feelings of the moment, for such was their creed 
on this subject. Yet had they taken that old, familiar 
Prayer-Book in which their fathers had worshiped, but 
which they had discarded, and turned to the very Ser- 
vice which on that day and horn* was being read in many 
a Church in their ancient homes in England, where 
could words more appropriate to their own condition 
have been found ? It was the twenty-second day of 
the month, and thus the Psalm for the day describes the 
perils through which they had passed : 

" They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their 
business in great waters ; 

These men see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the 
deep. 

For at His word the stormy wind ariseth, which lifteth up the 
waves thereof. 

They are carried up to the heaven and down again to the 
deep ; their soul melteth away because of the trouble. 

They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and are 
at their wits' end. 

1 Mrs. Hemans. 



LITURGIES. 139 



So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivereth 
them out of their distress. 

For He niaketh the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof 
are still. 

Then are they glad, because they are at rest ; and so He bring- 
eth them unto the haven where they would be. 

O that men would, therefore, praise the Lord for His good- 
ness, and declare the wonders that He doeth for the children of 
men ! " 

And then how nobly does the same Psalm, in a pro- 
phetic spirit, go on to sketch the happy destiny which 
awaited them in the land of their adoption ! — 

" He maketh the wilderness a standing water and water-springs 
of a dry ground. 

And there He setteth the hungry, that they may build them a 
city to dwell in ; 

That they may sow their land, and plant vineyards, to yield 
them fruits of increase. 

He blesseth them, so that they multiply exceedingly, and suf- 
fereth not their cattle to decrease. 

And again, when they are minished and brought low through 
oppression, through any plague or trouble ; 

Though He suffer them to be evil-entreated through tyrants, 
and let them wander out of the way in the wilderness ; 

Yet helpeth He the poor out of misery, and maketh him 
households like a flock of sheep. 

The righteous will consider this and rejoice, and the mouth of 
all wickedness shall be stopped." 

And now let us briefly look at the Witness which 
this Service bears, and it will be an inducement to us to 
" continue steadfastly 1 ' in these Prayers which the 
Church used in the Apostles' days. 

The Church then, in its Services, witnesses against 
the world, to claim from it our time. As days pass by 



140 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

us, they are marked in the outward world by those 
changes which God Himself has ordained. The sun 
rises and sets, and the moon is " established as a faithful 
witness in heaven." Thus day and night, light and 
darkness, succeed each other, and man labors and rests 
as they prescribe. The seasons, too, pass by — Spring 
and Autumn, Summer and Winter, Seed-time and Har- 
vest. To these changes men are compelled to conform 
— to adapt themselves to them. But all this is of the 
outward world. It regards the way in which Time 
should be distributed in its service — how man should 
rise and sleep, and " go forth unto his work and to his 
labor until the evening" — how he should plod along 
the path of this world's business. 

Now, the Church comes in, and by her Services 
claims an interest in this Time. Her Calendar is the 
ceaseless witness that it belongs not to us — not to the 
world — but to our Lord. She has her appointed Pray- 
ers for Morning and Evening, that devotion may go 
with us into our worldly business. She takes the first 
day of the week, and sanctifies it by a peculiar conse- 
cration. And then how admirably does she lead us 
through the year with our Lord ! Advent and Christ- 
mas, Good-Friday, Easter, and Ascension, with their 
intermediate Festivals, trace the course of His solemn 
pilgrimage from the manger of Bethlehem to the ago- 
nies of Calvary, and thence again to the heights of Oli- 
vet, where He parted from His disciples, and " a cloud 
received Him out of their sight." She has her alterna- 
tions of Yigils and Fasts — of Abstinence and Feasts — 
her voice of warning to the living, and her commemora- 
tion of the dead who have passed away, that those who 



LITURGIES. 141 



still linger in their earthly homes may imbibe their 
spirit and tread in their footsteps. And then, once in 
each year, she calls us to times of peculiar sadness. 
She has her Lenten Season of forty days of fasting and 
mortification and self-denial and weeping for sin, that 
her children may free themselves more entirely from 
this world's influences. Thus the Holy Seasons to 
which her Ritual calls us are scattered through the year, 
sanctifying each part of it. Like low and solemn 
sounds, they appeal to the spirit, now in notes of sad- 
ness and now of joy, making the heart, as it were, the 
dwelling-place of a perpetual echo of heavenly sounds, 
realizing those words of the Apostle, " There are, it 
may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none 
of them are without signification." 1 

Thus it is that the Church endeavors to consecrate 
the time which otherwise would pass by us without 
leaving any valuable lesson. She breathes a new spirit 
into it, and makes what is interfering with our happi- 
ness minister to our spiritual progress. For is it not 
an unhappy influence which Time produces, with resist- 
less authority wearing away our love and our affections, 
and forcing us to be forgetful and cold, when we ear- 
nestly desire to be otherwise ? " There are many of us 
who have lost parents or children, or friends, who would 
fain have kept alive within our. hearts the same keen 
and lively memory of them, as we had when first they 
died. But Time will not let us ; it hurries us along ; 
and our impressions grow fainter and fainter, till at last 
they almost die away. Then in our friendship, and our 
loves, time grievously interferes with us. It will not 

1 1 Cor. xiv. 10. 



142 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

allow the glow of our affection to continue. "We cease 
to love friends we have loved before for no other reason 
than that the lapse of time has cooled our love, and we 
are not able to withstand its power." x 

And how often are we forced to feel that we, too, 
mnst be subjected to this Lethean power, and be for- 
gotten as are those who have trodden the path of life 
before us ! As we take our place in the toil and busi- 
ness of this lower world, and endeavor to play our little 
part in the warfare which is waging about us, how often 
are we forced to feel that one day all this will be going 
on as now, unabated in its earnestness, when we are 
gone, and the places which now know us are to know 
us no more forever ! " Men will have our houses and 
our gardens, and will be glad and happy therein. They 
will walk about the same streets, and have the same 
joyous meetings, when we shall be slowly and neglect-' 
edly falling back into the cold earth out of which we 
came ; and they who loved us will have laid us therein, 
shed a few slight tears upon our coffin, gone to their 
pleasure or their toil, and straightway forgotten all 
about us. And yet they are not unfaithful or unaffec- 
tionate. It is Time's fault, not theirs." 2 

Now this is what the Calendar does, when it takes 
this flight of time and teaches us from it the lesson of 
our own immortality. From this craving within us 
which nothing here can satisfy, this shrinking back 
from forgetfulness, this fleeting current which goes by 
us, and which we cannot arrest, the Church proves to 
us that Time is nothing, but everything is leading us 
on to the Eternity beyond. 

1 F. W. Fabcr. - Ibid. 



LITURGIES. 143 



And this Calendar, which places such solemn lessons 
before us, as we go onward in life, is not the invention 
of modem wisdom, but the growth of ages better than 
our own, of ages of self-denial and holiness, when men 
stood on a height of sanctity to which now we seem un- 
able to attain. It was moulded into its form by men 
who, in the words of Scripture, " in all their works 
praised the Holy One most High with words of glory, 
and with their whole heart sang songs ; who set singers 
before the altar, that by their voices they might make 
sweet melody, and daily sing praises in their £ongs ; and 
beautified their feasts, and set in order the solemn times 
until the end, that they might praise His holy name, and 
that the Temple might sound from morning." * Thus 
it is, that while our Service witnesseth for the wisdom 
of ancient Christendom, and comes to us instinct with 
the spirit of the Eitual of Western Europe in the olden 
days, it also sanctifies the year with its holy times. 

Again, the Service bears its witness against the pre- 
vailing selfishness of the world. The first requisition 
our Lord made of those whom He invited to become 
His followers was, that they should deny themselves. 
It was requiring the hardest struggle through which 
the human heart could pass, thus to lay aside its own 
will and the devotion to its own interests, and, with a 
philanthropy which extends to a suffering world, to go 
forth willing to sacrifice itself for the benefit of others. 
In the earnestness of worldly strife we forget the chain 
which binds us to those who share the same nature with 
ourselves. It rusts and decays in the atmosphere of 
this sordid world. 

1 Eedes. xlvii. 3. 



144 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

Now, it is the object of our faith to restore this, to 
bid man come out from himself, to show him there are 
other and higher interests than his own for which to 
live, and a nobler field open to him than the following 
out of his own private ends. It is to teach him to seek 
not his own but others' good. 

And this lesson is taught us through the medium of 
its Services. Look at the very nature of its prayers, 
how many of them are for others, how it looks through 
the whole scale of humanity, and offers up its petitions 
for all men everywhere. The Church directs us to 
pray for those who rule over us in spiritual and in 
temporal things ; for the sick and the afflicted ; for 
travelers on the land and on the tossing sea ; for father- 
less children and widows ; for those who are desolate 
and oppressed ; and for all who in the weakness of their 
nature are " sounding on their dim and perilous way." 
Everything in her Services teaches us to look out of our- 
selves to our risen Lord, or else to His poor and deso- 
late children who are scattered abroad throughout this 
evil world, that they may be saved through Christ for- 
ever. 

And so we might take the Services separately, and 
show how each one is characterized by the spirit of 
broad and Catholic love. The only prayer which our 
Lord Himself taught us to use — that which bears His 
name — is throughout in the plural number. And how 
does the petition, " Thy Kingdom come," carry us be- 
yond the bounds of our own particular Church or coun- 
try, breaking down the narrow barriers of nationality, 
and inspiring us with great thoughts of that happy 
period pictured by the prophets, when every heart shall 



LITURGIES. 145 



bow in love to the Prince of peace, and righteousness 
mantle this renovated earth ! 

Above all, in the blessed Sacrament of the Body 
and Blood of Christ, how solemn the lesson we are 
taught of our union, not only with our Lord, but with 
all His true followers ! ¥e feel that we are alike 
members of His mystical body, and, as St. Paul declares, 
" we being many are one bread and one body ; for we 
are all partakers of that one body." 1 We realize truly 
the Communion of Saints, as we gather about that Altar 
which has been the home of His children since He de- 
parted from the earth, and will unite them all in one 
holy fellowship, until He comes again to claim His 
heritage. Who can be worldly, or uncharitable, or nar- 
row himself down to paltry and selfish interests, when 
the Heavens seem opened to him, and its magnificent 
rewards are almost within his reach, as he joins with 
Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of 
Heaven, to laud and magnify the glorious name of Him 
that sitteth upon the throne ! 

And still more touchingly is this witness borne by 
her commemoration of the dead. The world would 
teach us to forget them, that the chain is broken which 
bound us to those who have passed away, and when 
ages have rolled between us, they have obliterated every 
trace of union. But the Church tells us it is not so, 
and in the Festival of All-Saints she shows we have 
fellowship also with the dead. Like the men of Galilee, 
after the Ascension, we still stand upon the mountain 
and look upward toward Heaven, that we may see the 
pathway of their glory. 

1 1 Cor. x. in. 
7 



146 TEE CEURGE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

And this is a feeling which to the Early Christians 
was sanctioned by the living Apostle, whose words were 
yet fresh in their hearing. St. Paul, in his Epistle to 
the Hebrews, gives the long catalogue of those who had 
died in the faith, and commends them to the converts 
to whom he wrote as that " great cloud of witnesses " 
who were surrounding their path, seeing how they ran 
the race for Eternal life. And particularly he refers to 
Abel, the first martyr, and declares that by the blood he 
shed he still speaks to them. Four thousand years had 
indeed passed since he went down to the tomb, its ear- 
liest fruits in this world of sin, yet here we learn how 
lasting is his memorial. With what an eternity of du- 
ration his voice is gifted, as it is borne down upon the 
breath of ages ! The Apostle speaks as if their interest 
in his example had been as great as that of those who 
lived in his own generation. 

And such continued to be the feeling of the Early 
Church toward the dead. In that first age of the faith, 
as indeed it has been in every age, the reverence for 
the departed was associated with all that was lofty and 
elevated in man's character. Their union with them 
was not a mere assertion to be repeated in the Creed, 
but a real and tangible tie. And one thing which gave 
an intensity to this feeling was the fact that it was an 
age of martyrdom. This invested their remembrance 
of the dead with an interest which can never be called 
forth in times of peace and quietness. The living lis- 
tened to the words which the departed had bequeathed 
to them, with a more reverent awe, because they came 
from those who had "fought the good fight,' 1 and been 
faithful to the end, though they had to give their lives 
or the faith. 



LITURGIES. 147 



We can never indeed understand " the Church of 
the Apostles," or imagine the feelings with which they 
looked upon the dead, unless we realize the view they 
took of martyrdom. It was to them a glorious privilege to 
be " counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ's name." 
The injunction — "When they persecute you in one 
city, flee to another " — seemed to have no place in their 
remembrance. Some, who had themselves suffered in 
a fearful persecution, writing to St. Cyprian, refer to 
the tragical endings of their friends as " the glorious, 
we will not say, deaths, but immortalities of martyrs." 1 

And this was the spirit of St. Cyprian himself, when, 
as Bishop of Carthage, he was called to face danger and 
death. When Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, had been 
condemned to an exile which before long was to end in 
martyrdom, St. Cyprian writes to him. Were those 
words of sympathy which he sent across the Mediter- 
ranean ? Nay, rather of congratulation for the sufferer 
and triumph for himself, that he, too, was a member of 
the persecuted Church : " We have been made acquaint- 
ed, dearest brother, with the glorious testimonies of your 
faith and courage, and have received with such exul- 
tation the honor of your confession, that we count 
ourselves also sharers and companions in merits and 
praises." 2 

And again in his Epistle to some who for a year 
had been suffering in prison for the faith, St. Cyprian 
thus runs the parallel between the seasons of the year 
and their lives. We copy it entire, not only for the 
tone which pervades it, but also for its singular elo- 
quence : " Behold, the heavenly dignity in you is sealed 

1 St. Cyp., Epis. xxv. 2 St. Gyp., Epis. lvi. 



148 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

by the brightness of a year's honor, and already, in the 
continuance of its victorious glory, has passed over the 
rolling circle of the returning year. The rising sun and 
the waning moon enlightened the world ; but to you, 
lie who made the sun and moon was a greater light in 
your dungeon, and the brightness of Christ glowing in 
your hearts and minds irradiated with that eternal and 
brilliant light the gloom of the place of punishment, 
which to others was so horrible and deadly. The win- 
ter has passed through the vicissitudes of the months ; 
but you, shut up in prison, were undergoing, instead of 
the inclemencies of winter, the winter of persecution. 
To the winter succeeded the mildness of spring, rejoic- 
ing with roses, and crowned with flowers ; but to you 
were present roses and flowers from the delights of 
Paradise, and celestial garlands wreathed your brows. 
Behold, the summer is fruitful with the fertility of the 
harvest, and the thrashing-floor is filled with grain ; but 
you who have sown glory, reap the fruit of glory, and, 
placed in the Lord's thrashing-floor, behold the chaff 
burned up with unquenchable fire ; you yourselves as 
grains of wheat, winnowed with precious corn, now 
purged and garnered, regard the dwelling-place of a 
prison as your granary. Nor is there wanting to the 
autumn spiritual grace for discharging the duties of the 
season. The vintage is pressed out-of-doors, and the 
grape which shall hereafter flow into the cups is trod- 
den in the presses. You, rich bunches out of the Lord's 
vineyard, and branches with fruit already ripe, trodden 
by the tribulation of worldly pressure, fill your wine- 
press in the torturing prison, and shed your blood in- 
stead of wine ; brave to bear suffering, you will; 



LITURGIES. 149 



drink the cup of martyrdom. Thus the year rolls on 
with the Lord's servants ; thus are celebrated the vicissi- 
tudes of the seasons with spiritual deserts, and with 
celestial rewards." x 

All this to us is only a distant picture, seen through 
the dimness of fifteen hundred years, but to those then 
living it was a fearful reality. The men of that gen- 
eration realized, as we cannot, the heroic self-devotion 
which marked the painful entrance of these combatants 
into the mansions of their Father's glory. They knew, 
too, that " the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the 
Church." "We find, therefore, a glory gathered around 
the memory of the martyrs which could never be claimed 
for the heroes of this world's conflicts, and the Church 
now remembers them in her most solemn anthem, when 
she declares, " The noble army of martyrs praise 
Thee ! " 

In all the ancient Liturgies, indeed, there was a 
prayer " commemorative of the faithful departed," 
which, at the Eeformation, was omitted from our 
Prayer-Book for fear it would give countenance, in the 
minds of the uneducated, to the prayers for the dead 
which formed one error of the Eoman Eitual. It was 
in these words, and, as will be at once perceived, was 
only an affectionate remembrance of those who had 
slept in the faith: "¥e commend unto Thy mercy, O 
Lord, all other Thy servants which are departed hence 
from us with the sign of faith, and now do rest in the 
sleep of peace. Grant unto them, we beseech Thee, 
Thy mercy and everlasting peace, and that, at the day 
of the general resurrection, we, and all they which be 

1 St. Cyp., Epis. xv. 



150 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

of the mystical body of Thy Son, may altogether be set 
at his right hand, and hear that His most joyful voice : 
' Come unto me, O ye that be blessed of my Father, 
and possess the kingdom which is prepared for you from 
the beginning of the world ! ' Grant this, O Father, for 
Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and Advocate." 

And how much in accordance with every feeling 
of our nature is this witness of the Church to our union 
with the dead ! It recognizes a tie binding us to them 
of which we cannot, if we would, divest ourselves. In 
our goings out and our comings in, when we rise and 
when we lie down, everywhere the thoughtful mind 
finds itself in immediate contact with those who have 
already passed the threshold of the Infinite and entered 
the unknown Eternity. 

They speak to us by their works. We are surround- 
ed by the evidences of their existence. Everything 
which we have we owe to them. In science, and lit- 
erature, and art, they prepared the way and wrought 
out all their discoveries, and when the long course of 
ages had perfected these, we came to enjoy them. " "We 
reap that whereon we bestowed no labor : other men 
labored, and we are entered into their labors." ' Our 
own life here is but a span — too short to accomplish 
much for ourselves — and well, therefore, is it for us, 
that the dead have been before us and toiled for our 
benefit. How different in this respect is our situation 
from that of the first man who lived upon the earth ! 
Around him all was in its primeval freshness, and he 
saw no traces of other beings like himself. He inherit- 
ed nothing, no records of experience, no beaten path in 

1 John iv. 38. 



LITURGIES. 151 



which he could tread, no footsteps to guide him, not 
even a grave to show that others had preceded him in 
the race of life. He stood alone. He was the first of 
that long procession of human beings who were to be- 
queath to us the result of all their efforts — how they 
prospered and how they fell — their trials and successes 
as life went on. 

And that chain has gone on, each generation con- 
tributing its share for the benefit of those who come 
after, until it has reached our day. But is there riot 
something sublime in this view of human life, this 
union of the past and the future, this tie which links 
men together in one mighty fellowship ? They who 
went before us laid the foundation of that vast edifice, 
which through ages has been gradually rising in power 
and strength ; and when they were called away from 
their labors, others of this common brotherhood who 
succeeded them took up the implements of labor which 
they had dropped, and built on where they had been 
forced to leave off, until at length they too ceased from 
their work. And thus the task came to us, that we 
also might do our share. ¥e are to contribute our por- 
tion toward the welfare of our race, that when we have 
gone we may not have lived in vain for those who 
come after. Thus it is, then, that from the distant past, 
from the populous centuries that have gone, there 
comes to us a solemn and mysterious sound, which is 
their voice. The earth is filled with their memories, 
and in each moment of busy, eager, craving life, we are 
brought in contact with the records of the dead. "Well, 
then, may they find a place in the devotions of the 
Church ! 



152 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

But there are more tender and touching memories 
than these. There are the memorials of those who are 
not separated from us by distant ages, but who have 
gone from our very midst. Peacefully are they sleep- 
ing in the populous cities of the dead, for the sphere 
of life is narrow compared with the mighty confines of 
the dead. They need no care, for their spirits are with 
God, and their bodies are committed to Him who cares 
even for the dust of His saints. Winter storms sweep 
above them, but they heed them not ; spring with its 
flowers, and autumn with its golden pomp, pass by, 
but they wake no consciousness in the silent sleepers 
below. The sunbeams fall brightly upon their graves, 
but they shall see no light until the last morning calls 
them again from the dust ; and there they silently await 
our coming. 

But by how many ways do they speak to us ! One 
by one they have passed away, and perhaps not until 
they were gone forever did we realize their worth, or 
feel that we had not prized them as we should ; then 
there flowed back upon the mind remembered acts of 
kindness and words of affection, until the very tones 
seemed to linger in our hearing, and forms which now 
are dust stood before us in all the well-known linea- 
ments of life. Thus it is that the dead are united to 
us by the chain of memory, which runs back to what 
they once were, and they speak to us in our firesides 
and in our chambers, so that we realize that, though 
invisible, life itself is filled with their presence. The 
world around, with all its familiar scenes, becomes con- 
secrated by the memory of the dead. " The communion 
of saints " gives a holy imaginativeness to our daily life. 



LITURGIES. 153 



Is it not well, then, thus with reverence, when we 
offer up our prayers in God's house, to remember the 
dead % It is not a subject of mere speculation or of 
sentiment alone ; it is one of practical use, which can 
give a coloring to our daily life. The times are be- 
coming intensely worldly. Day by day the crowds 
around us seem to be waxing more earnest in the pur- 
suit of wealth, and the sound of their exertions rises 
up with ceaseless din. Is it not well, then, to avail 
ourselves of any arguments which will break these 
associations and connect us with the spiritual world % 
And what can do it so effectually as this remembrance 
of the dead % They are ever passing away, and there- 
fore the appeal is constantly recurring. Year by year, 
as familiar faces depart, comes to us the proof that 
here we are only strangers and pilgrims. Our^ treasures 
have gone before us, and thus time is ever strengthen- 
ing the ties which bind us to the spiritual world. The 
departed are remembered among the holiest associa- 
tions of the past. " In memory of the dead " is the 
highest consecration which language can give. They 
are not dead to us, but are still near and familiar 
friends. They are to us " a presence and a power ; " a 
thousand things in the pilgrimage of life are touched 
by our association with them, as if by a quickening 
spirit, and we never go to the Altar of our Lord with- 
out remembering them, when we " bless God's holy 
name for all His servants departed this life in His 
faith and fear, and beseech Him to give us grace so to 
follow their good examples, that with them we may be 
partakers of His heavenly kingdom." 

For us, too, the very Burial Service has its solemn 



154 TEE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

comfort, as it sublimely refers forward to the hour 
when Christ shall come again, and the slumbering dead 
be raised to meet Him. And the elevating truths of 
Scripture are gifted with a new meaning to our hearts, 
when those hearts have been touched with sorrow. We 
rejoice, as it lays open to us the precious glories which 
await the just, and follow on its revelations as they rise, 
steadily and calmly, clear as the angel's trumpet of 
which they tell, until they merge into the sound of tri- 
umph and of victory, and we hear echoing through our 
desolate homes those cheering words of blessing and 
encouragement : " I would not have you to be ignorant, 
brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sor- 
row not, even as others which have no hope. For if we 
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even them also 
which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." 

"We see, then, how the Church by her Services takes 
hold of this trait in our nature and uses it for our own 
spiritual benefit. "We ask: "Where are the departed \ 
Where are the confessors and martyrs of early days \ 
"Where are the just who since their time have passed 
away from the sight of earthly eyes? Is it possible 
that we are no longer inhabitants of the same world, 
but that each has to think of the other in a perfectly 
different state of existence ? Is the link which bound 
us together broken, or are they still conscious of what 
we are doing here, and indulge in the confident antici- 
pation that we shall after a time be added to their 
society ? " The answer is : " They are still with the 
Church, though invisible. They are k under the altar,' 
and thence, as the Apostle shows us, 1 they raise their 
1 Rev. vi. 9. 



LITURGIES. 155 



voices to Him who is the God both of the dead and of 
the living. ' They have gone nearer Christ than we 
are. They see greater things than we see. They are 
safe from the world, which we are not.' With them 
the toils and sorrows of this world are over, and as they 
look back upon them, now that they have secured their 
bliss, they must realize in all its fullness the lesson con- 
tained in that noble line of the poet — 

1 The glory dies not and the grief is past.' n 

Thus we have " come to the spirits of just men 
made perfect," who, though absent in body, are yet 
present in spirit. And when we worship in our earthly 
temples, small is the company of the living compared 
with the invisible congregation of the dead. They have 
only passed before us, the first ranks of the Church, 
united still to us their brethren. One by one the 
Church commemorates the leaders in " the sacramental 
host of God's elect," the Apostles of our Lord ; and of- 
ten does she refer, as we have shown, to those who were 
their followers. Thus it is that the Church opens our 
sphere of vision even beyond the bounds of this world, 
and teaches us, too, to overcome our selfishness. 

We have had occasion, in these pages, in several in- 
stances, to refer to that Great Eastern Church, of which, 
with its sixty-five millions of souls, we know so little, 
and about which we so often, from our ignorance, speak 
so disparagingly. 1 In concluding these sketches, we 

1 In a late speech by Canon Licldon, in London, he thus refers to the 
Oriental Church : " The Eastern Church fares hardly at the hands of the 
Europeans of the West. Rome cannot forgive the rejection of her au- 
thority; those who are farthest from Rome cannot forgive the sacra- 
mental characteristics of this ancient communion. Doubtless there are 



156 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

would give one more illustration from the liturgical 
Services of that Oriental Church, to show the power 
which these forms must exert in impressing the hearts 
and minds of their people. "We wish to bring before 
our readers a picture of the Rites and Services with 
which, in those Eastern lands, they accompany the 
burial of the dead, that they may see how this Ritual, 
which has come down through more than a thousand 
years, inculcates the most lofty truths of our faith. 1 

.By their Services for the departed, Death is made 
the teacher of the living, and compelled to bear with 
him the tidings of his own defeat, proclaiming, wher- 
ever he goes, that his sting has been taken from him. 
Thus the child learns the awful truth of his future exist- 
ence from the corpse of the parent, who, living, would 
never have taught it to him ; and the dead infant, 
whose feeble lips had not yet power to frame the first 
faint stammering word, preaches with a terrible elo- 

features in her system which we might wish to sec changed; but when 
that Church has had freedom, she has shown her capacity for missionary 
labor of the noblest kind. It might seem, too, as if God had assigned to 
different parts of His great family the duty of illustrating different aspects 
of the Christian life. Rome manifested the beauty and power of high 
organization ; England maintained and exhibited the sacred rights of the 
individual conscience ; Western Christendom, in its various forms, illus- 
trated the active and creative side of Christianity, its progress and its ag- 
gressiveness ; to the Eastern Church has been confided the duty of show- 
ing by persistent endurance the excellence of the passive virtues. For 
four hundred years it might be said by them, • Therefore we both labor 
and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the 
Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe.' " 

1 For the graphic view of these Services the writer would acknowledge 
his indebtedness to the Christian Remembrancer, April, 1850. Of course 
these Services can only be seen in their fullness in lands in the East in 
which the Greek Church is dominant. 



LITURGIES. 157 



quence, to the men grown old in sin, of the life and the 
judgment to come. 

In those Eastern homes scarce is the last agony over 
when the salutation of peace is heard upon the threshold, 
and the servant of the Church appears to watch over her 
departed child. Most often it is the priest himself who 
has received the dying breath, and given the last abso- 
lution ; but at least he has been there to anoint the ab- 
solved penitent with holy oil, and celebrate on his behalf 
the Eucharistic Sacrifice. And now the dead body, 
made sacred by these rites, has become exclusively the 
Church's care, and from the moment that the priest ap- 
pears in presence of the corpse, the friends retire to per- 
form the only work which yet remains for them, in 
prayer and intercession. He enters, the neophyte pre- 
ceding him with the cross, and standing, while he signs 
the corpse with the threefold sign, he utters a brief 
prayer. And, ever as he speaks, he fills the room with 
clouds of fragrant incense, ascending up like the suppli- 
cations of the Saints, that wait in their white robes till 
their brethren shall be fulfilled. 

But not long does he linger there, nor allow this 
member of the great family of Christ — who now by 
his death has entered into visible communion with the 
Church triumphant — to remain among these strangers 
of the earth. When himself has closed the eyes, and 
sealed them with the sign of the Son of Man, until that 
day when, opening at His call, they shall behold Christ 
glorious in the heavens, he bids the people raise his 
sleeping charge and bear it forth to the Church, the 
antechamber of that grave which is the door of Heaven . 
Thus, not above an hour or two after the moment of 



158 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

death, the corpse is carried to that holy place which is 
now alone his home on earth ; and then it is that, by the 
sure tokens of the sweet death-chant and the coming of 
the Cross, the dwellers of the Eastern city know that 
one is passing from among them to his rest. Yet truly 
to their eyes it still must seem rather a march trium- 
phant than a funeral-train, for there is no gloom, no dis- 
mal pomp, no black pall, hiding, as it were, some sight 
of shame ; but only that music glad with holy hope, and 
the breath of flowers mingling with the sweeter incense, 
and, ever caught up from voice to voice, the deep, exult- 
ing cry : " Thou art the Resurrection ; Thou, O Christ ! " 
Long before the procession comes in sight, through 
the busy, crowded streets, they hear, floating through 
the clear air, soft and wild as the music of a dream, the 
low, faint murmur of a mournful harmony. It is a 
strain peculiar as it is melodious, most strangely sweet 
and sad, and so utterly unlike all other melodies that 
none ever yet heard it and failed to recognize the glo- 
rious old death-chant which for so many centuries has 
been the lullaby with which the Eastern Christians have 
sung their dead to sleep. It is a noble song of Victory 
— the victory of the Cross over Death and Hell — the 
triumph of the Holy One, who was dead and is alive, 
over the corruption He was never suffered to behold. 
It is ancient beyond all memory of man — a whisper 
which has echoed down through the crash and turmoil 
of the passing centuries, from those first days of purity, 
when the one Church Catholic was still unrent by the 
sore divisions of these last-afflicted times. Age after 
age, while the great monarchies have been swept away, 
leaving behind a scarce-remembered name, and genera- 



LITURGIES. 159 



tions successively have rushed past that dark brink that 
binds our mortal view, unchanging over the individual 
dead, those time-honored words have uttered one sacred, 
unfailing promise, as earnest to an ever-living hope. 
And as the well-known strain of wailing sweetness 
penetrates among the busy crowds, each one desists 
with eager haste from his employment to listen to the 
good tidings it conveys. Clear and distinct that an- 
them of the Eesurrection is intoned by the deep voices 
of the priests, in words so simple, and yet so powerful, 
that the most ignorant among the people cannot fail to 
gather and to understand the wondrous meaning ; while 
answering back, in tones more pure and thrilling still, 
the sweet voices of the youthful neophytes take up the 
chorus, of which the burden is ever how man through 
death attains to life eternal ! 

Then, far and near, wherever those words of prom- 
ise, like an angel's voice, are heard, each individual bows 
his head, and signs himself on breast and brow with 
the Holy Cross, which alone can be his passport to the 
land of deathless joy, while, with earnest supplication, 
as the truth of Eternity is thus palpably brought before 
him, he utters the appointed ejaculation : " Lord, have 
mercy upon us ! Christ, have mercy upon us ! " 

So universally are these observances inculcated on 
all who witness the journeying homeward of a corpse, 
that the very little infants are seen with their tiny 
hands striving to make the sacred sign, as yet so far be- 
yond their comprehension, and murmuring with their 
stammering lips the early-taught petition. 

Then all reverently stand aside, with head uncov- 
ered, as the funeral appears in the distance. The con- 



160 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

veying of the body to the church, which is the first 
part of the ceremonial, is most often performed at sun- 
set, for they love that the pale glory of the dying day 
should rest upon the face where the light of life hath 
faded ; and thus it mostly happens that the last sunbeam 
flashes with its expiring radiance full upon the lofty 
cross that first meets the eye as the procession comes in 
sight. It is borne several paces in advance, carried up- 
right by a young child, the youngest of the neophytes 
— for the Eastern Church, with a touching humility, 
ever appointed in all her offices that none should be 
permitted to the high office of Cross-bearer save only 
these little ones, of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven. 
Their innocent hands alone shall presume to touch that 
sacred token — holier in their innocence, as they believe, 
than even those of the anointed priest ; for they think 
that those tender lambs, newly washed in the baptismal 
waters, have more than any others been made Kings 
and Priests unto God and His Father. Three young 
children, then, walk solemnly in front, the one clasping 
the great cross within his folded arms, and bending down 
his head behind it with humble reverence, so that at a 
distance it seems self-impelled through the air, while, 
on either side of him, his two companions bear the 
symbols of the Holy Trinity, which are painted in signs 
easily understood, on circular panels, elevated on long 
poles. The three neophytes, according to invariable 
rule, have their heads uncovered, so that their long, 
flowing hair falls on their shoulders and veils the down- 
cast eyes they never raise. It is a touching thing to see 
them thus on the threshold of life marshaling with such 
reverence and solemnity an elder brother to the tomb. 



LITURGIES. 161 



Immediately behind them walk the priests, who, 
from the first moment the mortal breath departed, have 
come forward as guardians of that heir of immortality, 
and have allowed no hand but theirs, the anointed of 
the Lord, to minister unto his last necessity. So soon 
as, by the mighty barrier of death, he was exiled from 
his family, from the love of friends, and the sweet chari- 
ties of home, then has the Church opened wide her 
arms to receive him, and gathered him, like a jealous 
mother, to her own loving care. 

There are never less than three or four priests ac- 
companying each funeral, for among the Eastern Chris- 
tians the distinctions of rank and station cease with this 
mortal life. These holy men walk abreast, heralding 
the corpse, and wearing the flowing, priestly robes, which 
they never quit on any occasion, with one hand swing- 
ing to and fro the silver censor, and with the other 
holding the book from which they chant the blessed 
words of promise ; then treading closely in their steps, 
even as it is meet all men should follow the leading of 
anointed guides, the bearers of the dead advance. They 
wear no mourning-dress, for they conceive not that is a 
day of mourning, but, rather, one of triumph, and they 
carry between them, by the aid of two long poles, an 
open bier, covered only with a fair, white cloth. 

And there, reposing calmly, with the sunlight on 
his brow, the departed lies in holy rest, and ready to 
meet the gaze of all. Never would they hide from the 
eyes of men that countenance serene, but rather bid all 
come to look with thankful hearts upon the face of the 
dead, for they count him in all things a conqueror — 
vanquisher over the mortal existence with all its pow- 



162 TEE CEURCE OF TEE APOSTLES. 

ers of agony, and over the last enemy, which shall be 
destroyed with all its nameless dread. From the death- 
struggle and the life-struggle comes he forth alike tri- 
umphant ; the first shall appall, the last shall torture 
him no more ; therefore, they place upon his brow the 
conqueror's crown, and robe him in the fairest dress 
he ever wore on gala-days, for what high festival in 
all his past career was like to this ? "What was that 
hour of deep rejoicing, when at the altar his young 
bride took him by the hand, to walk with him the pil- 
grimage of earth, compared to the far brighter moment 
when death clasped him still more tenderly, to lead 
him forth into the bliss of life eternal ? So shall no 
mournful shroud be put upon him, but the gayest dress, 
in token of festivity, with the laurel-wreath of victory. 
His arms are crossed upon his breast in mute, submis- 
sive faith, and clasped within them is the representa- 
tion of our Lord upon the cross. As he is borne along, 
all press with eager haste to look upon the countenance 
of him who truly is even as they represent him, " Vic- 
tor atque victima, atque ideo victor quia victima," and 
generally they follow him upon his road, gazing still, 
fascinated by the aspect of his rest. 

All who desire it may accompany their departed 
brother to the church, where the corpse is reverently 
placed immediately before the holy doors, the feet 
turned eastward and the cross held upright, ever placed 
there carefully before the fixed, calm eyes, as though 
the intensity of their gaze upon the holy symbol had 
set them in that rigid stillness. The deacon then lights 
the appointed number of tapers at the head and foot of 
the bier, while every individual present receives one in 



LITURGIES. 1G3 



his hand, so that although the sunshine streams through 
the open door and windows, the church is yet full of 
another softer radiance, in token that the Church of 
Christ hath truly light within her, which is not that 
of mortal day. The priests then range themselves 
around the corpse, and if there be a Bishop present, as 
often happens, he stands at the head, his hand upraised 
in the appointed form, so that the Church's blessing 
overshadows still that sacred dead, who seems to lie so 
meek and tranquil, because of the holy power thus shed 
upon him. The Service then commences with the 
chanting of the Psalm Qui habitat (Psalm xci.) and 
others, followed by prayers most beautiful and full of 
consolation, ranging ever round the one sublime hope 
of the rising of the flesh in glory, as though the Church 
conceived that the very sight of that corpse could 
awaken no other thought ; and ever at the close of each 
the priest pauses for a moment, while the voices of the 
deacons and the neophytes take up again the glad exult- 
ing cry, " Thou art the Besurrection." 

The lesson is then read, 1 beginning with the words, 
" I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, con- 
cerning them which are asleep," and terminating, " and 
so shall we ever be with the Lord." When it is over 
there is an interval of silence, although the deep ab- 
straction of all present shows that the voice of the soul 
is not hushed ; and then, at a signal from the priest, 
the friends of the departed come forward one by one 
to press the final kiss upon his lips, uttering at the same 
moment a stated prayer, that the whole body of His 
Church may soon be made partakers of His glorious 

1 1 Thess. iv. 13-17. 



164 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

resurrection. And there is a deep wisdom in thus con- 
necting the last expressions of mortal tenderness with 
the aspiration after that holier love in which all shall 
he one hereafter. The calm farewell thus ended, they 
retire from before the altar, the words yet lingering on 
their lips which speak of a blessed meeting with him 
they are now quitting, where they shall part no more ; 
the priest advances in front of the corpse and delivers 
an oration ; that taken from the Homily ' of St. John 
Chrysostom, which is chiefly used by the Eastern Church 
on solemn occasions, is beautifully appropriate. 

As the last words die away in the solemn tones of 
the priest, there is a pause, and then, mingling in one 
deep voice of triumph, once more the cry arises from 
every individual present, so oft repeated as though they 
could not cease to tell their joy : " Thou art the Resur- 
rection ; Thou, O Christ ! " 

This, for the present, terminates the ceremony. 
The priest makes the sign of the cross, first over the 
dead, then over the living, thus uniting them in the 
common hope, and so departs from the church, fol- 
lowed by the whole concourse of the people, leaving 
the corpse alone lying beneath the altar— like the souls 
that were bid to rest a little season— the lights burning 
round it solemnly, and the incense still hanging over it 
like a cloud of fragrance. Thus the dead rests for the 
night, surrounded, as the ancient faith declares, with 
the holy angels, who linger forever round the altar. 
At sunrise the priests return for their charge, and the 
train goes forth in the same order as before, and how- 
ever great the distance from the church to the grave- 

1 \oyos irapcuveTixos. 



LITURGIES. 165 



yard, the priests cease not to chant the hymn of immor- 
tality, and over the burning plains which often they 
traverse, the sweet strain floats away in distant echoes, 
making the desert joyful with hope. 

In the larger cemeteries there is very often a small 
chapel especially consecrated for the " Missa pro De- 
functis," but this is not celebrated till thirty days after 
the death. It is, therefore, to the spot of interment 
that the train proceeds at once, where the priest takes 
up his station at the head and the cross-bearer at the foot 
of the grave, and ever as they approach, louder and loud- 
er, not from the neophytes alone, but from all present, 
swells the cry proclaiming that He is the resurrection. 
But soon the voices are reverently hushed, while many 
holy prayers are said, and at last the deacons, at a sign 
from the priests, lower the corpse into the grave, which 
is always very shallow ; then, while still upon the face 
the last ray of earthly light is beaming, the last token 
is ffiven of the human love which was the sunshine of 
his soul. . The friend that in life lay nearest to that 
still heart — most often the cherished wife that was the 
faithful guardian of his happiness — draws near, and 
kneels down on the very brink of his new couch, and 
with a voice of passionate entreaty, into which is gath- 
ered all the deep longing of the widowed soul, she 



utters three times the word " Ella," come, and if he 
answers not — if that most mournful appeal fails to win 
him from his silent rest, then do they know that he is 
dead indeed, and far beyond all reach of that poor, 
impotent affection. She withdraws, the chief of those 
who loved him on this earth, that the representative of 
love divine may take her place. The priest gently cov- 



166 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

ers the quiet countenance with a white veil; next he 
pours into the grave a little wine, in type of that which 
he trusts the departed shall taste anew in the kingdom 
of his Father ; and, finally, taking in his own anointed 
hands as much of earth as they can hold, he strews it 
on the dead body in the form of a cross, uttering aloud 
these words, " The earth is the Lord's and the fullness 
thereof ; the round world, and they that dwell therein." 

And truly replete with a glorious and solemn mean- 
ing is that sentence when uttered at such a moment. 
For if the earth be the Lord's and " the fullness there- 
of," full even to repletion is it with the bodies of the 
dead, which thus are proclaimed to be His, which none 
shall ever pluck out of His hand, but which from their 
dwelling in the dust shall awake and sing, when the 
earth shall cast out the dead. Having spoken these 
words, the priest and deacons proceed to fill up the 
grave; some of the nearest relatives alone being allowed 
to assist in this sacred office, and that a hired hand 
should have a share in it is wholly inadmissible. As 
the form disappears under the earth, the friends press 
forward, and each one says, as he gives his last look, 
that which to his great and exceeding comfort his heart 
believes, " It is well with thee, my brother! " Again, 
over the grave the holy sign is made, responded to by 
all around, and so they depart and leave him to his 
rest. 

But this is only for a season. Most unlike the chill 
and systematic oblivion which seems to overspread the 
memory of those departed from among ourselves, every 
effort is made by the Eastern Christians to bind, as it 
were, the living spirit to themselves more closely still 



LITURGIES. 167 



by holiest links. Although he hath gone home a little 
while before them, his name is on their lips in every 
prayer, and anxiously do they look forward to the Feast 
of the Commemoration, which takes place on the thir- 
tieth day. Then, the Holy Eucharist is celebrated, and 
afterward it is offered whenever the friends feel desir- 
ous to renew so blessed a remembrance of him, not lost, 
although to their eyes of flesh unseen, and they love on 
such occasions to decorate the church with flowers, and 
to fill it with lights and all things which most betoken 
joy and gladness, so that many even of the little chil- 
dren, who may never have seen the departed brother or 
friend, are thus led specially to connect death only with 
images of holy hope and rejoicing in the risen Lord ; 
nor can they ever dread it as the enemy that shall shut 
them out from the love of those to whom their own 
hearts cling. For ever, on the anniversary of the de- 
parture, the survivors fail not to repair to the grave 
where they have hid their treasures, and there kneeling 
down, they press a fond, clinging kiss upon the earth 
that covers them, and whispering the well-remembered 
and beloved name, they bid him have patience yet a 
little till they come, and assure him, with many a soft, 
endearing word, that he is not forgotten, but that faith- 
fully they love him still. 

Such is the lesson taught by this ancient Ritual. 
Death is seen no longer as the King of Terrors arid the 
destroying enemy, but himself the slave and laborer of 
that Mercy which doth bless in life eternal; constrained 
by the very power which seems to annihilate and kill, 
to fit the children of the kingdom for an existence 
which is never-ending joy, and with his own hand to 



168 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

lead them through the tomb where he hath no power to 
hold them, as through an open portal, to the glory of 
the never-fading day. Even as of old the captives were 
compelled to tell out the great deeds of their conquer- 
ors, so should this vanquished and stingless Death for- 
ever proclaim aloud the victory of the resurrection. As 
the herald of immortality he appears before men ; as the 
gentle Messenger sent by the Lord of Life, to gather 
with gentle pity into His merciful anus the poor wan- 
derers exiled into this sad world of weeping, and safely 
lead them homeward to their Father's house ! 

How high and holy then is the doctrine taught by 
the Eastern Church through its Burial Service ! It is 
that the one holy office which Death should perform in 
this world is, to sit, robed in garments of celestial white, 
at the door of man's Universal Tomb, in likeness of 
that glorious angel who once rolled back the stone from 
the gate of the Sepulchre, and sat thereon. And to all 
who come there seeking their beloved and weeping, as 
she came and wept who loved much, this angelic Death, 
in tones as sweet as was the voice of that bright Messen- 
ger, says gently : " Why seek ye here the living among 
the dead ? He is risen, and therefore all they that sleep 
in Jesus will God bring with Him ! " 



V. 
CONCLUSION. 



" The golden evening brightens in the west; 
Soon, soon to faithful warriors eomes the rest ; 
Sweet is the calm of Paradise the blest." 

W: W. How. 



V. 
CONCLUSION 



We have thus endeavored to present our readers 
with a picture of the Church of the Apostles in its doc- 
trine, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayers. Not, 
indeed, merely to gratify curiosity have we thus un- 
rolled the records of the past, and summoned up, over 
the wastes of eighteen centuries, the testimony of these 
ancient believers. Our object was to give, even in this 
fragmentary form, a glimpse of the ancient Church, as 
it stood before the world in its Unity, pure in doc- 
trine, reverencing, in its ceaseless worship, the Sacra- 
ments of its Lord, and ever sending up those holy words 
of prayer which we have now inherited. 

The picture carries with it its own solemn lesson. 
Involuntarily we feel the contrast between those early 
times of earnest faith, and the worldliness of these lat- 
ter days. It requires no voice of an inspired prophet 
to show how far we have wandered from the example 
of those who stood nearest to the days of our Lord's 
pilgrimage on earth. From our own times we gather 
but little material to add to the sacred record of the 
Acta Sanctorum. 

There is a legend of the Eastern Church which, 
fable as it is, may give a speaking warning to the fol- 



172 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 

lowers of our Lord " through the ages all along." It 
is the story of the seven Christian youths of Ephesus, 
who in one of the later persecutions of the third cen- 
tury fled from the city and took refuge in a cavern in 
the neighboring mountains. There they fell asleep, 
and by a miracle their slumber was prolonged till more 
than a century had passed ; then they awoke, and un- 
conscious of the flight of time, or that their sleep had 
lasted beyond a single night, they cautiously returned 
to the city. 

But everything seemed changed. ISTew buildings 
had arisen, and the whole aspect of the once familiar 
streets was altered. The very air and manner of 
the people were different ; and, feeling as if they 
were walking in a dream, they secretly inquired 
whether there were any Christians in the city. 
" Christians ! " was the reply ; " why, we are all Chris- 
tians." On the one side they were pointed to a splen- 
did church, surmounted by the once despised Cross, 
and on the other to schools founded to teach the doc- 
trines of Jesus. What gladness filled their hearts as 
they learned the mighty renovation which had swept 
over the world, and heard that the faith had penetrated 
even into Caesar's palace ! 

But soon they learned the reality. It seemed to 
them that with the apparent triumph of the cause the 
spirit of the faith had departed. The self-denial and 
holiness of the days they once knew were gone, and, 
sorrowing, they exclaimed : " You have shown us many 
edifices apparently devoted to the Christian faith, and 
countless multitudes who have assumed that name; 
but where, oh where, are the Christians \ " 



CONCLUSION. 173 



And so they returned in sadness to their cave, and 
He who " giveth His beloved sleep " wrapped them 
once more in unconsciousness ; but it was that dream- 
less slumber not to be broken until their Master should 
come again. They went to rejoin again the confessors 
and martyrs of their own age, with whom alone they 
could sympathize in thought and feeling. 

In this way it is that the legend brings before us 
the plain and undeniable contrast between the Church 
in the martyr days of Diocletian, and its successor 
under the courtly favor of Theodosius. And so, in 
this volume, we would show the wide difference be- 
tween the Church of the third century and that of the 
nineteenth. We would have our readers see how 
much nobler was the life of those early days, which 
was symbolized by the Cross, as those who bore the 
Christian name were obliged to tread their path over 
the thorn and brier, with bleeding feet and aching 
heart, till life became one long sacrifice to Christian 
duty. And if, now, all this is changed, and the world 
smiles around us, so that the Christian life has ceased 
outwardly to be a warfare and a conflict, but goes peace- 
fully on, surrounded by all spiritual blessings, until it 
merges quietly in the grave, we may well ask the ques- 
tion, whether we have not lost some of the most ele- 
vated traits of Christian discipline. 

"We would have those, then, who have accompanied 
us through these pages, to realize that there is a tie 
which binds them to those early days which even the 
intervening ages have not broken. Then the dead in 
Christ will cheer them on their way, sweet voices speak 
to them from within the veil, and the spirit of the Up- 



4 

174 THE CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES. 



per Sanctuary be breathed into their hearts. Thus they 
will be prepared for this holy fellowship, and when 
earth to them is no more, they will find themselves 
with the friends who had passed away before, once 
more around them ; the pledges of their Lord fulfilled 
to the utmost, and every want of their immortal being 
satisfied ; for then they will be members of the Church 
in Heaven. 

And how glorious will be the change from the un- 
certainty of this world to that bliss which, when once 
it is gained, can be lost no more forever ! What rapt- 
ure to the spirit, when the shore is reached, and it feels 
that temptation and trial forever are passed, and the 
long ages which stretch before it are to be marked only 
by a bliss which it hath not entered into the heart of 
man to imagine ! — 

11 With what a bounding thrill 
He'll feel the airs that never chill, 

The strength that knows not years ! 
No cloud in all the Heaven's sweet blue ; 
No more of doubt, where all is true ; 
Nor death to close the longing view ; 

No dream of future tears ! 

u The way is passed, and he can stand, 
As if on Jordan's farther strand ; 
As if, the palm-branch in his hand, 

The chaplet on his brow, 
A wanderer resting at his home, 
A pilgrim at the holy dome, 
To Zion's mountain he has come — 

Eternity is now ! " 

1 The late Bishop (Burgess) of Maine. 

THE END. 



WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



i. 

THE LENTEN FAST.— Eleventh Edition. 

II. 

THE DOUBLE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH.— Twenty-first Edition. 

III. 
THE' CHEISTMAS HOLYDAYS IN ROME.— Fourth Edition. 

IV. 
EAELY JESUIT MISSIONS IN NORTH AMEEICA.— Fourth Edition. 

V. 
THE CATACOMBS OF ROME.— Seventh Edition. 

VI. 
EAELY CONFLICTS OF CHRISTIANITY.— Third Edition. 

VII. 

NEW YOEK IN THE OLDEN TIME. 
(Only 350 copies, printed by G. P. Putnam & Co.) 

VIII. 

THE UNNOTICED THINGS OF SCEIPTUEE.— Second Edition. 

IX. 
HISTORICAL SCENES IN THE OLD JESUIT MISSIONS. 



PRIMARY TRUTHS OF RELIGION. 

By Right Rev. THOMAS M. CLARK, D. D., LL. D., 

BISHOP OF EHODE ISLAND. 

1 vol., 12mo. Price, $1.00. 

From the Allgemeine Literarische Zeitung, Berlin : 

" We find in this book of the Bishop of Bhode Island a contribution to 
Christian apologetics of great interest and value. The book discusses, in fivo 
parts, the problems of Theism, the fundamental principles of morals, revela- 
tion, inspiration, and Christianity. The great questions pertaining to these 
several heads Bishop Clark has most satisfactorily solved vrith a genuine 
philosophical spirit, and on the basis of comprehensive studies. The work 
gives evidence throughout of the author's familiarity with the fundamental 
problems of the philosophy of religion. The Bishop is, without doubt, an 
eloquent and original thinker; and his work, which, in its logical develop- 
ment, is acute, and clear, and precise, will enchain the interest of the readers 
for whom it has been written. As a short but exhaustive book for doubters, 
we greet this production of one of the most distinguished members of the 
American Episcopate, and wish for it an abiding success." 

From the New York Express: 

"The author of this valuable little work is a distinguished Bishop of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, and has conferred a benefit on his co-religionists 
and on earnest Christians generally, by the production of this estimable hand- 
book of Orthodoxy. Avoiding dogmatic theology, he clearly and with great 
eloquence presents the scriptural and historical evidences in favor of revealed 
religion, meeting the cavils of objectors with calm and well-digested argu- 
ments that will claim attention from even the most confirmed skeptics. The 
chapters on the evidences of the great truths of Christianity are especially 
worthy of commendation. Indeed, the whole work will prove an acceptable 
addition to the controversial religious literature of the day. 1 ' 

From the Providence Journal: 

"We are late, quite beyond our intention, in calling attention to a volume 
of about three hundred pages, recently issued by the Appletons, and written 
by Bishop Clark. It may seem superfluous to do more than announce the 
appearance of a work from an author so well known among us; but it is a 
book of too great importance and value to be left to such chances of circula- 
tion and reading as come simply from the weight of the Bishop's name. It 
deserves to be read, and that very widely, and among nil classes of intelligent 
people, not because ho wrote it, but because it puts into a portable, compact, 
clear, and convincing shape the great truths on which our Christian faith rests. 
We hardly know a more useful service to which Bishop Clark could have put 
his hand. It is one for which he has peculiar, and, we may say, unusual quali- 
fications. Few men, certainly few ecclesiastics, could deal" with religious skep- 
ticism so boldly and yet so "fairly, with a vigorous faith in great principles, 
and yet with a" liberal spirit and breadth of View. Few men in his position 
could be so little trammelled by the timidities and conformities which might 
prevent a free and fearless grapple with the questions now in debate between 
Christianity and unbelief." 

From the English Churchman and Clerical Journal, London: 
"Bishop Clark has published this pithy treatise to meet the unsettled state 
of mind of his own countrymen in relation to the 'fundamental principles of 
faith and morals.' The language is admirably lucid and clear, and the mean- 
ing of the writer is never buried under profound and technical phraseology, 
too often used in such works. Clergymen will find it excellently fitted foi 
teaching to thoughtful working-men in their parishes." 



Wbw York: D. APPLETON & CO.. Pdbushkes. 5-19 & 551 Bioadwat. 



PRIMARY TRUTHS OF RELIGION. 



From the Church Opinion, London : 

" Bishop Clark's work is invaluable, as it is not written in a style above th« 
capabilities of the general public, but, in words easy to be understood, refute* 
the doctrines of Positivism." 

From the New Englander : 

" ; Primary Truths of Religion,' by Bishop Clark, of Ehode Island, is full 
of seed-thoughts, which, like all good seed, are themselves the fruit of a ripe 
growth of earnest reflection. In very simple statements, and with little 

Earade of reasoning, the author has given the results of much careful think- 
lg in respect to the great truths which are fundamental to the Christian 
faith. He has not, like too many bishops, contented himself with repro- 
ducing the received doctrines of the faith in oft-repeated platitudes, but has 
used the English of cultivated men to express certain definite opinions of his 
own. In short, he has produced a very readable, thoughtful, and useful vol- 
ume, on the most important subjects, which is none the less useful because 
it is condensed and brief.'" 

From Old and New: 

"We have long been impressed with the idea that the primary truths 
of morals and religion should be taught far more frequently in our higher 
schools of learning, and not be left for theological seminaries. Bishop Clark's 
book would be an admirable manual for such instruction. Its style is simple 
and clear ; its historical statements are accurate ; its spirit is of the broadest 
Christian charity ; its tone toward all opponents is one of the utmost liber- 
ality and fairness. For such a purpose as that, no less than for general read- 
ing, we heartily commend it." 

From a review in the Literary World, London : 

"We welcome this book from the pen of an American Bishop. Dr. Clark 
has done well in this volume on ' The Primary Truths of Religion.' With 
clearness, conciseness, logical force, breadth of tone, wise discrimination, con- 
vincing statement, he deal3 with fundamental facts. Indeed, the whole work 
is one which may be put into the hand of any thoughtful, sincere unbeliever 
in the great truths with which it deals. Its candor will awaken admiration, 
and its reasoning lead to faith." 

From the Bsoton Transcript: 

"This clear and candid treatise is not dogmatic, but entirely true to its 
title. The writer, in a plain and lucid style, addresses himself to the unsettled 
condition of mind which prevails so extensively in regard to the doctrines 
that underlie all our ' Systems of Divinity.' His answers to fundamental 
questions are given in a catholic spirit that recognizes the fact that doubt is 
not sinful in itself, and there is no little skepticism which is to be treated 
with sympathetic and rational consideration." 

From The Living Church : 

" The book of the Bishop of Rhode Island is timely. It is of a kind whicl 
the church needs. It is fair, honest, and open. It does not sneer at what i£ 
does not understand. It addresses itself in simple and honest terms to hcn- 
est and thoughtful men. It is calm and judicial. It states opposing views 
with great fairness ; it takes up a position which must command respect, and 
It states it in terms which are moderate, and show appreciation of the fore* 
of opposing views." 



newYoek: D. APPLETON & CO.. Publishers, 540 & 551 Broaivwa* 



The Recovery of Jerusalem. 



Capt. WILSON, R. E., and Capt. WARREN, R. E., 
Etc., Etc. 

1 vol., Svo. Cloth. With Maps and Illustrations. 

Trice, $3.50. 

" This is a narrative of exploration and discovery in the City of Jeru- 
salem and the Holy Land. It is a volume of unusual interest to the stu- 
dent of antiquities, and throws much light upon what was already partially 
known about the Holy City, and opens up many curious speculations and 
suggestions about things that were entirely unknown until the excavations 
and explorations commenced which the book faithfully records. The 
maps and illustrations much enhance the interest, and aid in a thorough 
understanding of the things described. It is a volume of over 400 pages, 
8vo., bound in cloth, and altogether beautifully presented." — Springfield 
Republican. 

Christ in Modern Life. 

SERMONS PREACHED AT ST. JAMES'S CHAPEL. 

By Rev. STOPFORD A. BROOKE. 

1 vol., 12mo, Cloth Price, $2.00. 

The main thought which underlies this volume is, that the ideas 
which Christ made manifest on earth are capable of endless expansion, to 
suit the wants of men in every age ; and that they do expand, developing 
into new forms of larger import and wider application, in a direct pro- 
portion to that progress of mankind, of which they are both root and 
sap. If we look long and earnestly enough, we shall find in them the ex- 
planation and solution not only of our religious, but even of our politi- 
cal and social problems. All that is herein said is rested upon the truth 
that in Christ was Life, and that this Life, in the thoughts and acts which 
flowed from it, was, and is, and always will be, the light of the race 
of man. 

D. APPLETON & 00, Publishers, New York, 



Musings over the " Christian Year" 

AND 

"Lyra Innocentium." 

By CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE. 

Together with a Few Gleanings of Recollections of the Rev. John 
Keble, gathered by Several Friends. 

One small thick i2mo. Printed on tinted paper. Price, $2.00. 



" The ' Christian Year,' by Rev. John Keble, has found a place in the 
hearts of pious Churchmen, second only to that of the ' Pilgrim's Progress ' 
among Christians generally. It consists of poems on all the church-days 
of the year, in which the deepest thoughts of a saint, a poet, a scholar, 
and a pastor, when stirred with the strongest feelings both of Christian 
and of man, find expression ; and these ' Musings ' of Miss Yonge will 
interest every admirer of that famous work. In a series of annotations 
on these poems, Miss Yonge has sought to seize and express the subtle 
meaning of the poet, and explain a few difficulties in their arrangement 
and allusions. Nearly one-third of the book is occupied with recollections 
of Rev. John Keble, in which is presented with singular distinctness 
the life of one of the saintliest men of modern times. The style of Miss 
Yonge is one of charming purity and simplicity, and the entire volume 
as a book of devotion will be read with profit by all Christians." — Church 
Journal. 

" All the principal religious festivals of the year are appropriately al- 
luded to in this volume, with suitable reflections thereon. The book par- 
takes more of a series of sermons than any thing else, although prayers 
are occasionally introduced. All whose religious views coincide with 
those expressed in the work will find it interesting and instructive." — 
Rochester Democrat. 

D. APPLETON & CO., 

549 & 551 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 



A thoughtful and valuable contribution to the best religious literature 
of the day. 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 



A Scries of Sunday Lectures on the Relation of Natural and Revealed 
Religion, or the Truths revealed in Nature and Scripture. 

By JOSEPH LE CONTE, 

PROFESSOB OF GEOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY IN THE UNrVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 

\2mo, cloth. Price, $150. 

OPINIONS OF THE PBJSSS. 

" This work is chiefly remarkable as a conscientious effort to reconcile 
the revelations of Science with those of Scripture, and will be very use- 
ful to teachers of the different Sunday-schools." — Detroit Union. 

"It will be seen, by this resume of the topics, that Prof. Le Conte 
grapples with some of the gravest questions which agitate the thinking 
world. He treats of them all with dignity and fairness, and in a man- 
ner so clear, persuasive, and eloquent, as to engage the undivided at- 
tention of the reader. We commend the book cordially to the regard 
of all who are interested in whatever pertains to the discussion of these 
grave questions, and especially to those who desire to examine closely 
the strong foundations on which the Christian faith is reared." — Boston 
Journal. 

"A reverent student of Nature and religion is the best-qualified man 
to instruct others in their harmony. The author at first intended his 
work for a Bible-class, but, as it grew under his hands, it seemed well to 
give it form in a neat volume. The lectures are from a decidedly re- 
ligious stand-point, and as such present a new method of treatment." 
— Philadelphia Age. 

"This volume is made up of lectures delivered to his pupils, and is 
written with much clearness of thought and unusual clearness of ex- 
pression, although the author's English is not always above reproach. 
It is partly a treatise on natural theology and partly a defense of the 
Bible against the assaults of modern science. In the latter aspect the 
author's method is an eminently wise one. He accepts whatever sci- 
ence has proved, and he also accepts the divine origin of the Bible. 
Where the two seem to conflict he prefers to await the reconciliaticn, 
which is inevitable if both are true, rather than to waste time and words 
in inventing ingenious and doubtful theories to force them into seeming 
accord. Both as a theologian and a man of science, Prof. Le Conte's 
opinions are entitled to respectful attention, and there are few who will 
not recognize his book as a thoughtful and valuable contribution to the 
best religious literature of the day." — New York World. 

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, N. Y. 



